Sunday, Oct. 16, 2005 - 3:25 p.m.

I hate my paper, I hate it I hate it I hate it.

Usually when I work on it, my 'work' involves inserting some spaces between the examples and exchanging some words for better synonyms. I had about 15 pages, but whenever I do this sort of 'work' it usually ends up shorter by a line or two. This is not progress.

So I told my advisor I'd give him a draft Monday or Tuesday so I could get some comments from him about how to spiff it up. Thinking that this sort of deadline would make me work on it. Indeed it did; I printed it up, reread it, and decided that I basically disagree with my own thesis, and more importantly, that my advisor would probably be able to shred it in a matter of minutes. Hell, I could, so why not expect him to?

This brought on a relatively small change to make my thesis more defensible (thanks to J's advice on how to do it without scrapping the whole thing), but now I need to restructure the whole thing and rewrite significant portions. As if producing a 15 page partial paper after two years of ostensible work isn't bad enough, now I'll have to shorten it even more by editing out the indefensible bits. And it's not gonna get rebuilt by the "beginning of the week" when I told him I'd give him the draft.

And what really pisses me off is that I know he doesn't give a rat's ass if I give it to him or not. If I do, fine, and if I don't, well, it'll only confirm his suspicions about me. Or I can give him a crappy, even-worse-than-it-was-last-week paper on time, and he'll doubtless focus his advice on things that I already knew about, stuff already on my list of things to finish revising.

But if I give him the pre-revision version, he'll bring up the fatal flaw that I already see, and think I'm a dumb-ass for not seeing it.

I hate writing and I hate this damn paper. And I hate my advisor.

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