Me to my supervisor: "I keep wanting to completely restructure everything, but I know I have to draw the line somewhere and say, this is what I've got. It's the best I can do in the time I have."
Supervisor: "You're right. There's such a thing as being too much of a perfectionist."
Me: "Even if I'm not 100% happy with it, I know that's not the end of the world. I don't know any PhD who's entirely happy with what they handed in."
Supervisor: "Well I was! And [big name in field] probably was. Oh, and [other huge name in field who wrote a ground-breaking thesis still widely read 35 years on] always said she was pretty damn proud of hers."
Just in case I needed another completely unrealistic yardstick to measure myself against.
repeat over and over: The best thesis is a done thesis.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, mine was a load of garbage.
That was so mean! And thoughtless! And probably not true. I realize with my profs, sometimes they only remember the good things. Because they are on the other side now--and (since they are teaching us at good schools) have had quite a bit of success since their depressing days as a grad student. So they tend to remember the good and not the bad.
ReplyDeleteI don't think she was being consciously mean: she's not like that. But thoughtless, yes. And maybe she was also a little offended that I implied her own thesis had maybe not been totally perfect :) (And for the record, she has a right to be proud of her own, since it too is still a well-known and fundamental reference work in her area 30+ years after she wrote it.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks, ianqui :)
LOL! I agree with wwwmama, sometimes professors just have foot in mouth moments. It would have been a lot more helpful to give an opinion on whether your diss could use restructuring or not.
ReplyDeleteI just totally restructured my dissertation. I am not being a perfectionist: it just had to be done! But this is the last time, I swear. One of my good friends here says, "Your dissertation is not a book. It's something you have to get through so you can graduate." Amen.
ReplyDeleteI know I'm late to this party, but the only thing my advisor ever told me about hers was that she thought she was writing a book and she so wasn't and that her analysis was juvenile.
ReplyDeletemy own thoughts on skimming her dissertation? Damn, she knows a lot about slag.