oh, the supervisor. universal force of extreme sadness.

this must be tiresome: reading posts with content no more profound than 'my supervisor makes me sad.'

today he looked at the spectra i took over the past three days and said that there was nothing there. then he seemed surprised that i was still looking at the old sample, EVEN THOUGH THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HE TOLD ME TO DO.

he also said, "it only makes sense to look at arrays that you think have a chance of producing results."

duh.

of course that only makes sense. but WHO was the one who told me to go through all of the arrays on this sample and systematically take spectra?

i've spent the several days doing exactly what he tells me to do, and he's unhappy.

what the hell am i supposed to do, then?
now he tells me i should be looking at the new sample and only at arrays that have a decent defect. but again, i point out the challenges of being able to pinpoint a single array on a field that's bigger than the range of motion of my translation and he says "that's irrelevant. you should be able to find a way to unambiguously know which array you're looking at."

"i'll find a way to do it," i said. "i'm not using this as an excuse not to do it. i just wanted to point out that it wasn't completely trivial."

to which he replied "very few things are."

then later on, he says "nobody's accusing you of anything."

i dunno. his delivery sure makes it sound like an accusation. then again, he always sounds disgruntled. always.

maybe what's ultimately upsetting me is that he is someone that i definitely have absolutely no capacity to read whatsoever, and he's one of the people that it's most essential that i do know how to read. but what do i do when i ask for suggestions and all he offers are sweeping comments about what it is that i should be able to do -- and quickly?

least helpful supervisor EVER.

this whole physics department has completely turned me off the discipline. i find that there are so many people that i can't even begin to respect.

...

i was contemplating yesterday starting this advent calendar in the lab counting down the days to my departure. just come in every day, eat a chocolate, then step back and look at it with satisfaction as the number of days dwindle.

what would also help the lab atmosphere, as my sweetie astutely pointed out, is reggae, blasting through all of the vents in the lab.

'relax, man,' i'd say to my supervisor.

and groove out to bob marley.

excellent.