rant away 8-)

======= Date Modified 26 Jul 2010 11:06:07 =======
My rant today is because...

for some reason my supervisor has decided to comment and change my work - fine I may hear you say. Well yes of course I welcome her comments. Unfortunately she has put some in red italics, some in black italics (I'm talking mid paragraph here, so you have to realy try and find them in every line) and most wierdly, the majority of the comments, I have just discovered, are in the same size, typeface, font, colour etc as the actual paragraphs so its reading

The number of procrastinators on posgradforum.com has sharply risen I would rather say increased here in the past few years.

WTF!

A lot of them aren't even comments, she's just restructured, but without any track changes, so I'm having to flick between an old version of the document and the new one with changes to work out what the hell has happened! I am seriously concerned about her sanity.

:-s:-s:-s:-s:-s:-s:-s:-s:-s:-s:-s:-s:-s:-s:-s:-s:-s:-s

I couldn't leave you ranting solo sneaks, so here's my contribution....

No one reads or makes any contribution to the running our "our" project but me, they don't even reply to emails. All this despite the fact that with my phd ending, I'm the one person who doesn't have any future investment in the project. However, now and then an individual likes to redeem themselves by actually reading a document, and making a few facetious "corrections" that they copy to the whole team in order to showcase their masterful insights/ highlight my incompetencies. It would be fine if they were helpful revisions, but the main one today clearly displays that the person hasn't actually read the correspondence that my new documents stemmed from! This so-called amendee has spelling mistakes in their own criticising email as well and I am currently resisting the urge to write back, amending their own errors (with the entire department copied in, naturally). Grargggggggggghhhhhhhhh!

As for your sup, I remember you hair-tearing over this same issue before - what is it with her aversion to tracked changes? Is she a sadist?

aww I hate it when people - especially people at a similar level - critique your work. I had a girl who I had to show my work to as part of my project, but I was really saying "here, read this if you are interested" and I'd get it back 2 days later scrawled with red pen! and this girl has no academic background, is the same age as me and is not doing a PhD!

My supervisor is useless with computers I think, which is very annoying. Her first comment is to "add some stats here about this" which she thinks will take 2 mins, but in fact tracking these stats down will take about 3 days and she has no idea, so she will probably be demanding work for me in a week and I will still be trawling ONS and Eurostat for silly figures.

Arrrrrrrrgh, she's done it again!!! After being very good and saying "thank you thank you, three bags full" and "now I need to send this off", she's emailed again with the tremendous insight that is (to paraphrase) "section XVIII has a typo, there are two "l"s in llama".

Really, out of around 400 pages of documents this is the most important thing you could write? And it was relevant to copy your pearl of wisdom to ten people (including several very busy doctors) because.......??? Oh the rage I have today. I'm just ignoring it, I really could not care less about these suggestions if I tried.

I shall make us up voodoo dolls sneaks, one to prevent this woman from emailing me, another to send your sup running to the nearest Microsoft Word tutorial.

oh FFS, I have no idea what's my writing and what's hers now. VERY ANNOYING. She has also put LOADS of comments in the intro paragraph - about things I've discussed later on. Why can't she read the whole thing and then go back and make comments!?

Waaaaa!!!! My sup does that too! Most annoying!

The thing is, if I add the stuff in she has indicated she wants in the intro, then the intro will be the entire paper - this happens EVERY TIME I write something and results in a paper that is 4000 words over the journal limit and takes months editing because it has a load of unneccessary rubbish in the intro which is then repeated further down!

Ahhh my supervisor does that too!! Not my main one thank god, but the 2nd sup. He's so bad that my main sup has told me to come to him with corrections from the 2nd sup before I start on them to see what to include and what to ignore! :-) Drives me absolutely crazy!! Plus, he tends to include a separate word document with paragraphs explaining that something is crap, and lots of little digs and snide remarks, with NO info on how to make it better! Instead of using Track Changes might I add. What a joy!

I'd like to add a couple of rants or so -
after going awol for several months, my super now wants me to work at top speed to get things back by September
After saying one chapter was  more or less ready to go, they have come back with a load of things they want me to change/add etc. when I only sent them the copy they had approved so they could remember what I was doing
One of them insists of showing me a journal site that they can access every time we get together, but for some reason I can't open any of the articles as I appear not to have the right credentials to do so - it may be available only on campus, but on looking at the subscription list, this uni isn't there - and however many times I tell them so, they still keep saying I should get several of the articles to read
I have changed the emphasis of my thesis a bit so some of the stuff they want me to include as major content is now more of a peripheral area, but they are still pushing for it big time
apart from that though, things are progressing quite well really.... considering the amount of work I have to do and the short amount of time I have available at the moment
:$ :-)

======= Date Modified 27 Jul 2010 14:17:54 =======

Its even worse when its someone who's not at the same level! I was pretty cross really, we accept that our work will be critiqued at whatever level whether its by a supervisor or by the academic community as a whole, and its to be welcomed. But when someone critiques your thesis (MA) in their lit review basically rubbishing it, tells you they've done it with something of a smirk on their face and then explains and they've completely misunderstood and have criticised you without checking their facts out then its a mite infuriating! The crazy thing was we share a sup who also supervised me for said MA and who knows the work backwards, then this girl threw a stroppy when told that she couldn't just cherry pick bits without actually approaching it as a whole when it all made sense anyway! She's an MA student, no probs there, weren't we all lol, but it made me cross that she then gave me a printout of part of my MA marked and pointing out where she felt I'd gone wrong and how I could improve my methodology! Wtf????? lol lol. Sad thing is that she's now left the programme after just not making the grade :$ just to stress here, she'd completely ignored a vast part of the thesis (ie the findings) misunderstood my methodology which was sound apparently and written that I wasn't really worthy of a distinction as I couldn't write properly........ :-s I had a few sleepless nights til I was contacted by my sup after she told him she'd spoken to me and then reassured that she'd made the c*ck-up, not me lol.... sigh.....

OMG, I'm on the verge of a mental breakdown today. 1) the stupid supervisor 2) the stupid wood pidgeon who's somewhere on my street 3) stupid children who are now off school - and one has been singing in an inane voice for about an hour, the same 5 notes, like an out of tune recorder ARGH!

Are we neighbours sneaks ;-) Sounds like my daughter - if she sings 'schools out for summer' once more i swear I'm leaving ;-) I'm getting seriously concerned that I'm going to have to write off the entire school holdiays - I've got 3 of them here :-( on top of that I've got an article to write by early Sept and no idea where to start - feeling so stressed out and upset right now that i've been ranting to all and sundry that I'm quitting

Well this is a neighbours kid - I've had to shut the window and resist the MASSIVE urge to shout SHUT THE F UP down the usually very quiet cul de sac.

I would probably spend my months stipend on getting them dvds/video games to keep them busy, or can you get other parents to look after them?

well I've just compared the word count for my orignal section on XYZ to supervisors sent back version of XYZ. Mine = 1600 words hers = 600 words, but without any explanation about where the magical 1000 words have gone - no comments, nothing. I'm now going to have to go through sentence by sentence and work out what's gone one :-s