The professor and I
Nov. 3rd, 2005 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhPerhaps you remember the graduate school professor who wants me to apply to a fellowship of his, and who, when asked for details about the requirements, offered helpful advice such as "write two to three pages".
Let me tell you some more about him, because apparently he's just going to keep producing stories that I'll need to share. At the conference I went to a few weeks ago, he couldn't come because of some last-minute emergency, but had already prepared a Powerpoint presentation, which someone else agreed to read for him. The topic was about as dry and scholarly as you can get: whether the Indus writing system was indeed writing, or only a complicated series of symbols without the widespread applicability of true writing. You may think that such a presentation would be boring, and you would normally be right, if only because professors do not tend to refer to those who disagree with them as "cowards" and their theories as "bullshit", particularly not in 76-point type. With pictures. At several points the host refused to read what was before her, and just blushed and mumbled, "You can see what he thinks about this on the screen. I'd like to state again that I do not necessarily share these views."
Sometime around the point that I stopped howling with laughter, I decided that this was totally the guy I wanted to work with, if only because I have a distressing fondness for giant introverted assholes.
Unfortunately, giant introverted assholes have their downsides. He has an annoying tendency of replying to lengthy emails with a single sentence. Today, he sent me an email which consisted entirely of, "I also need a one page CV from you." Having googled 'CV' to find out that it is, basically, a resume, now I have the problem of finding enough things to fill out a page, given that I have not, you know, published anything, done research, taught anything, or held any job remotely related to the topic.
Applying to grad school is the best! /sarcasm
Let me tell you some more about him, because apparently he's just going to keep producing stories that I'll need to share. At the conference I went to a few weeks ago, he couldn't come because of some last-minute emergency, but had already prepared a Powerpoint presentation, which someone else agreed to read for him. The topic was about as dry and scholarly as you can get: whether the Indus writing system was indeed writing, or only a complicated series of symbols without the widespread applicability of true writing. You may think that such a presentation would be boring, and you would normally be right, if only because professors do not tend to refer to those who disagree with them as "cowards" and their theories as "bullshit", particularly not in 76-point type. With pictures. At several points the host refused to read what was before her, and just blushed and mumbled, "You can see what he thinks about this on the screen. I'd like to state again that I do not necessarily share these views."
Sometime around the point that I stopped howling with laughter, I decided that this was totally the guy I wanted to work with, if only because I have a distressing fondness for giant introverted assholes.
Unfortunately, giant introverted assholes have their downsides. He has an annoying tendency of replying to lengthy emails with a single sentence. Today, he sent me an email which consisted entirely of, "I also need a one page CV from you." Having googled 'CV' to find out that it is, basically, a resume, now I have the problem of finding enough things to fill out a page, given that I have not, you know, published anything, done research, taught anything, or held any job remotely related to the topic.
Applying to grad school is the best! /sarcasm
