u/Fluffy_Reserve11

I am 23 years old working as a Junior Research Fellow at one of the top most research institutes in India. Recently I joined a project of one of the Post Docs (Senior) in our group, which is a side project for me. After two months going through different and wrong techniques I finally found the correct one which will work for my part of my project. The person I started working with turns out to be a little egoistic and getting offended on small small things which really should not matter, like getting offended on hearing a no straight to his face from anyone. I ignored 2 3 instances like this but when i decided I dont want to work with someone of this character who was also becoming impatient for the results. I directly told him a day later of deciding not to work on that project and he started speaking as someone who holds a position over me or can command me. I told him I dont want to have any argument between us as it wont lead to anywhere. Maybe he is 10 years older to me and was thinking he can speak in any manner, so when he wanted to have an argument, I also started in his tone of voice and it got escalated. I tried controlling myself but I couldnt as he started bringing up unecessary assumptions of me wasting time and always not interested to work on that. So I need a stoic perspective of how I should have handled this situation.