Jun 30 2009
Flash of brilliance
About a week ago, my advisor gave me a side project. I worked on it for a bit, but then I brushed it aside. It was a minor verification project as in, please look at this, it looks broken, but tell me if it makes sense kind of deal.
Yesterday my advisor called me into his office to ask me what was going on and why little progress had been made. Being the lame grad student that I am, I didn’t have a good explanation. Anyway, the conclusion of the meeting was that he needs me to do it by the end of July.
Just a few minutes ago, I fired off a 1,000 word e-mail to my advisor that took me an hour to write. This e-mail explains the observed phenomena and demonstrates that what is observed is reasonable and that the system isn’t in fact broken.
I haven’t heard back from my advisor on whether or not he buys my explaination, but I feel pretty darn good about it right now.
Too bad this flash of brilliance was on a side project and not my own research. The good news is that I feel pretty good about not getting fired.