What state is your written work in when you send it to your supervisor.

I've almost finished the first draft of a chapter, but there are a couple of sections I know are pants and I need my supervisor's advice on. Do you send work in as perfect state as possible to your supervisors or is it ok to send stuff you know is kinda scrappy in places?

(To be honest I think my supervisor will be so thrilled I've FINALLY given him something to read he won't notice that it's crap LOL)

Hehe at the last sentence SixKitten! Send it - I have emailed appalling pieces to my supervisors (and I mean so awful I would shake at the computer waiting for a reply) usually with a sob story to accompany them e.g. "I've been up all night and I can't do any better". It is good to get something through and they're there to give feedback after all so I say go for it. You may just be sick of looking at it - it could be fantastic!

I usually highlight sections in an accompanying email that I want particular help with (this is a euphemism for sections I think are nonsensical drivel). This way, my supervisor can focus on the rubbish areas particularly. Talking things over with her really helps me so I'd rather send something crap, get her feedback and rewrite than spend double the time getting it better on my own. I'll sometimes just outline a section as freewriting and give that to her to read, because I develop my arguments non-linearly quite often (as you can tell from this comment).

My Supervisor is pretty senior - head of school and a Professor.. however, he is always really, really busy... I would send him stuff and he would 'read' it... and it would come back with grammatical corrections only, nothing to do with content... I used to try and make sure it was as finished as it could be before sending it to him... after all, if you still have things to improve.. why send it before you have improved them? On the other hand, if I was unsure of the content or direction.. then I would email him before then and ask ' is this the kind of thing you were after?'

I did put a few choice lines in my papers before sending them to him ' Sheep only eat green grass' and ' Silence of the lambs is a great film' - both lines weren't commented upon and I was told ' It's great, submit it'

Thanks for the advice. Decided to just send it off - I know there are problems with it, but think I need his supervisor's advice before I try and put it write. It's the first thing I've written and been really surprised at how different it is to write for a PhD (so different to my undergrad or Masters) so not even sure if I've gone about it the right way.

Plus, I'm so sick of looking at it I had to pass it on to someone else LOL!!!

I would say send your supervisor the best work you can produce AT THIS STAGE. Of course he won't expect it to be perfect. I've sent my supervisor chapters with sections which were weak because I hadn't looked at all the primary sources yet but I think this is fine as long as you explain your reasons (and indeed you may receive useful comments from him which may help you when you do your primary research or experiments).