Typing on my phone, sorry if I miss anything. I just signed up here for the first time.

I’m 34, a PhD student at a university near Udon Thani. I’ve been doing my program for four years. My research topic is almost finished, but last night around 1:30 AM after I finished checking the data and felt like things were finally okay, something happened that shocked me and made me almost cry. It’s so quiet in here.

Short version: I did the main experiments myself, from preparing reagents to running the actual instruments. The main experiments took about two and a half years. I wrote almost all the results, drew the graphs myself many times until the only pen I had ran out of ink, and organized the data in a way that was really hard so others could understand. But when I gave the draft paper to my supervisor, they put a labmate’s name as a co-first author without telling me, and said that the labmate only helped a little with editing the language. I read it and was stunned — we didn’t discuss it beforehand. Uh… I’m so confused.

I feel overlooked. Or am I overthinking? I don’t want to start a conflict in the lab, but I also feel like my effort is being downplayed. Those months getting up at five AM to do experiments feel wasted. It really bugs me. Sorry for being dramatic, I’m super salty and sad.

Some coworkers acted like nothing happened, didn’t say a word. Some sent a sticker and disappeared. Some messaged asking what I wanted to do. I want to say it straight out but I’m afraid it’ll blow up into a big issue and make doing research harder later. I’m afraid people will think I’m being difficult. Should I talk to the supervisor formally? Set up a meeting and get it in writing? Or keep quiet for now and wait until things are done and bring it up later?

I’m really stressed T_T haha

What do you all think I should do? OP here, please give advice. Thank you so much!