I (21F) am in my third year of uni and currently doing a microbiology course that involves a lot of group lab work. I got paired with Leah (22F), who I was actually kind of excited to work with because she’s super smart, and I’d heard she was a perfectionist—which, in a lab setting, honestly sounded like a good thing.

But... she has this weird quirk. Every time we discover a new bacterial strain or isolate something under the microscope, she insists on naming it after one of her exes. Not joking. Our very first culture was apparently “Travis, the commitment-phobe.” Then we had “Ethan the chronic ghoster,” and just last week, she labeled a Petri dish “Brandon the liar with the IKEA futon.”

At first, I kind of laughed it off and figured it was just her way of making the course more fun, but it’s honestly gotten a little awkward. She even told our TA that she’s keeping a “bacterial burn book,” and when I suggested we maybe go with something more professional (like code numbers or Latin root names, literally anything normal), she said I was being boring and emotionally constipated.

I finally told her during our last lab that I wasn’t comfortable naming pathogens after her exes anymore, especially since we’re presenting our findings in a shared academic journal for the course. I didn’t want to submit a paper that referenced “Derek, the guy who faked a British accent for three weeks.”

She rolled her eyes and said I was taking things too seriously and that I “clearly had no artistic vision.” Now she’s giving me the cold shoulder and doing most of the lab work solo, and another classmate told me she called me a “fun sponge.”

Like… I’m not trying to ruin her healing process or whatever, but it’s not a podcast, it’s a science course.

AITAH?