Compromise
Apr 2nd 2008Wallabynerd alert & rants
Been working on slides this week, for a talk at the end of April. (They want a copy of the slides in advance so they can put them all on CD as a program to give out.) Naturally, every detail needs to be approved by the boss, which - naturally - “reflects fundamental differences in the way the two of us approach this kind of communication”. (That’s the objective way to say it. I mean that he’s stubbornly wrong, of course.) Of course, we haven’t actually talked about why he wants some of the changes that he wants, but I think I’ve figured it out:
Every time I talk or write about my work to others, I need to “sell it”. That is, whoever I’m talking to should come away feeling interested and excited and optimistic about what I’m doing. This is particularly important for this talk, since the real audience is largely the program that provides my funding(!). They don’t know enough of the details to know for sure how close I am to some sort of breakthrough - I hardly know myself - but they can certainly recognize a project with excitement and momentum and a plan for how to bring it all home. And that’s what I need mine to be - particularly since the other purpose of this event is job hunting/networking.
I can certainly agree with where he’s coming from. And I could’ve done it with my thesis work, or even pitching ideas for a soft-core research program to a faculty search committee. My problem is mostly that I really don’t have that kind of excitement and momentum. And my plan to bring it all home reads more like a list of stuff I would’ve been doing a year ago if he hadn’t stubbornly kept me on that other project that was such a waste of time. And the slides were due last Friday, and the boss is frustratingly incomplete when he “reviews” the slides - stuff that’d been fine for three whole drafts is suddenly awful. Sigh.
On the bright side, so this isnt’ ALL whining - had an excellent meeting with one of the profs here that we’re collaborating with yesterday. He seems very pleased, and wants to extend the shared work a bit. Which is good for me, because I’m hoping - more or less by default - to stick around here after my official appointment is up this summer. Mostly as a secure perch to hunt for jobs, although I think I could get quite excited about some of the collaboration ideas…