Most of the faculty are clearly too scared to be alone with me - my advisor even has another professor sit in on our meetings on zoom. Before covid, they always were very overly careful about leaving the door open. I appreciate that its safe, but it makes me so uncomfortable to see that they're obviously just worried about their reputations.
Male cohort members are asked out for drinks with their advisor or are able to have normal conversations at least, but most of the faculty seem to think small talk is dangerous.
There's always little sexist comments, mostly from the other phds, and even during recruitment a faculty member insisted that being a woman would help me to do well in this field.
Half the time they sugarcoat feedback so it's not even helpful.
It's just frustrating to feel like I can't be a normal human and just talk to facult and phds without it being a *thing*. There are only a few other women in the department, but they're not in my area of research and they're quite busy so I can't even really talk to them. I feel so isolated and alone.