You win some, you lose some, and some you break even.
My advisor is a man of few words (because I can never goddamn find him) but he uses them well. His most recent comments on an important piece of work I have in process are good examples of this.
On the one hand, I still need to improve some things:
But, on the other hand:
And, on the gripping hand:
Woo-hoo! Onward to mediocrity!
On the one hand, I still need to improve some things:
"You do suck at first-sentences."
But, on the other hand:
"The hypotheses are a lot cooler."
And, on the gripping hand:
"Really good writers do this hardly at all, and really poor writers do it all the time, but you do it a whole let less than they do."
Woo-hoo! Onward to mediocrity!
posted by Drek | 10:16 AM
2 Comments:
My undergrad thesis advisor once wrote the following marginalia:
"Well, this would be a great sentence if you were writing for 'Medieval teen Beat' magazine."
and:
"Unless you have Mr. Peabody's Way-Back machine, you can't discuss pre-history with any authority."
Advisors are there, I believe, to make us want to cry a little.
Yes, but I don't mind so much if they're amusing about it. My advisor was never funny. Well not in writing anyway, in the flesh he was quite amusing whenever I could stop being terrified for long enough to notice. I never will understand why I was so scared of someone who never bullied, verbally abused, insulted, thwarted or sabotaged me, which is more than you can say for most.
The red underlinings of my mistakes in sexual terminology were soul-crushingly embarrassing enough without comment.
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