Saturday, May 23, 2009

Uncomfortable Meeting

During my weekly meeting with my advisor this week, I planned to go over the slides I will give next week for my research presentation for qualifying exams. I spent the day before polishing my slides, making sure I had a nice smooth story.

Then I get to the meeting, and I said that I wanted to go over my slides, and I hook up my laptop to the flat screen. I start going over the introduction section, and suddenly I realize that there is some tension in the room.

I look over and my advisor looks really uncomfortable. I stop, and he interrupts me: Miss Outlier, he says, I really don't think it's appropriate that I be going over this with you.

Oh.

Apparently, this presentation is supposed to be done by the student without help from the professor. I guess this makes sense, since this is me proving to the panel of professors that I can do PhD quality research.

But you might have told me that before letting me blather on for six or seven slides... I was flustered for the rest of the meeting, expecting to be hauled off in handcuffs for cheating on my PhD qualifying exams.

Live and learn, I guess!

1 comment:

  1. You're not supposed to go over your presentation with your advisor? That's bizarre. In the department in which I currently work my PI gave lots of feedback to her gradstudent about his presentation for his qualifying exam.

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