I am a second-year PhD student in an American university. I am having an issue with relationships in my lab. Right now I am very jealous of another student in my lab, and I start to hold grudges against him. Let’s call this student X.
We have the same advisor, but I feel my advisor likes X a lot more than me. X is working on one of the most promising project that my advisor is highly interested in. The advisor spends lots of time with X in their meetings. In their meetings, when X asks a question, the advisor would answer him patiently and explain to very detail until he understands. When I had my meeting, my advisor is waiting for me to say something and mostly give short answers and our meeting would end very soon. I feel compared to other students, my advisor has no expectations on me, and doesn’t care about my work.
I know that my thought is bad, and it might not be the case that my advisor has a favorite student. I also think X is stronger than me academically. But I am very upset when I see X having meetings with my advisor. In our lab, our advisor usually comes to the student lab and has meetings with each of us one by one. I start to hate having meetings with my advisor because I would have to watch X having meetings with him before/after mine. And I start to hate both of them all together. Indeed, for some personal reasons, I am jealous of both of them.
But I don’t want my negative feelings to impact my study. I don’t know what to do.