Wednesday, June 23, 2010

What more could he want?

I'm on version 18 or something of the short note. As I mentioned before, nearly every time I send Sam a new version, he writes back with things I should add. When I finished his last round of suggestions a few weeks ago, I really thought that was the end. What more could he possibly suggest that hasn't come up already?

Today he sent another suggestion for incorporating some data that would be useful if we had it for everything we're studying, but we don't, and I don't see a good way to incorporate it. I. just. want. to. be. finished. So I'm writing an email to explain why I don't think we should add those data (and suggest that if he does, that he add it himself since he's an author too). Gah.

5 comments:

Alexandra said...

I think that sounds smart. Some profs are just like that. My master's advisor was like that. It was just never ending so we set a date by which it would be finished and I made as many edits as he wanted until then. I couldn't take it anymore. But, he was great and he really put a lot of effort into me, which can be a wonderful trait in an advisor.

Transient Theorist said...

Someone told me once (as an ironic comment on the review process) that if there's something you want left out of a paper, put it in the draft you submit, and if there's something you want put in, leave it out....

Karina said...

Follow up: I wrote the email, ran it past Jon, sent it, and Sam replied that he thought I was being harsh. Yikes. I certainly didn't mean to be harsh, but I guess it came across that I went from happy to exasperated in 5 seconds (I tried not to sound like that...). It has been incredibly helpful for him to give me so much feedback on my writing (like you said, Alexandra), but I just need a date to submit, like you did with yours!

Thanks Theo, I'll keep that in mind! ;-)

gigirose said...

oh man this happens to me all the time. it makes me wonder if i am just a bad writer and/or have poor attention to detail in the editing process, because after eight drafts I think "surely this is the final version" and then my advisor STILL finds more edits and rearranges structure, etc. I have to wonder sometimes if it is all worth it, but I can say that as far as my very first published paper: the final final accepted version was eons better than the first time we submitted it.
i guess experience gives you the perspective to be able to read through it on a different level.

Karina said...

gigirose, I agree that this version is tons better. I hope that these things get easier with experience, but it seems like they can only get so much easier before you plateau and no matter how much experience you have it will still take at least X hours to write a paper.