A couple of days ago I ran into someone I was an undergraduate with, at a drinks meeting. He's someone I was reasonably friendly with, usually nice enough but we're not close at all. We had a 'conversation' that really pissed me off - I asked him some polite questions about how his work was going (we're both doing PhDs) and he answered at length, with a fair amount of 'oh, aren't I wonderful' guff. He didn't ask me any questions back except for asking me if I was enjoying newly-married life.
This would have been fine, except this drinks meeting had quite a lot of academics at it (ie., the people PhD students are meant to impress and network with), and a guy who's a big name came over midway through and ended up in the conversation. My 'friend' talked over me, went on a lot about himself, etc. Fairly predictable. He managed to drop into the conversation how surprised he was I'd ended up doing a PhD too since I got a 2:1 at undergradute, etc., and also how well he was doing with so many chapters of his PhD written. Although we've been there the same amount of time, it was obvious to me that I'm a lot further on, so when the senior academic asked me if I were doing a PhD too I told him how far I'd got.
I left before both of them. Today in my inbox I have an email from the 'friend' who says 'Prof X and I talked after you left and we both agree your work would really take off if you read A, B and C, I've found them really useful and we think it could really make what you're working on into a proper project. I could email you the details if you like?'
I am just fuming and I really want to know what he said to the Prof after I left. I feel really crap. I can't help suspecting this guy has been running me down and making out that I don't really know what I'm doing and was lying/naive about the stage I said I was at in my work.
I'm partly just ranting here but really furious too.