Alpha Hydroxy
I have a thesis adviser.
I met him today, in his office, where he sat, thinking. He is approximately 40, with long lank white hair and a predilection for obsolete basketball shoes. On this afternoon he wore faded blue jeans and a purple golf shirt, somewhat unkempt at the collar. What he was actually doing would be difficult to say, though there was a notebook in his lap and a few hieroglyphs on his personal chalkboard.
I knocked tentatively on his door.
There was a time when I feared to interrupt his thinking, both for fear of losing his personal approbation and the inadvertent disruption of an idea being woven. On several occasions in our relationship he has declined to own my presence, as he focused his energy on himself, merely holding up a tangerine sized rubber ball in answer to my inquiries.
Today he smiled, as he does more often of late, having developed the unfortunate impression that I am capable of stimulating him in the least way intellectually. You could say I've been lucky lately. Thus there was a certain performance pressure as I stepped into his lair, at his slow behest. His desk was covered in feet of paper, as is usually the case, and he showed me three collaborative papers he was writing, each with its own notebook, stolen from the teaching supplies canteen.
He fumbled for a moment through one of them. After a moment he came to his notes, which I was flattered to discover contained a refutation of a proof I had presented in seminar the previous week.
"Was that your proof?" he asked, watching me with a pugnacious light in his eyes.
"No...It's Pollard's," I said. In truth it was my interpretation of Pollard, or an inchoate idea of his, which I had tried to phrase precisely.
"It's wrong," he said with palpable satisfaction in his polka style Wisconsin enunciation. "I'm almost glad it's not yours then."
He proceeded for the first time to show me a proof of his own during one of our scheduled weekly meetings. As he went along with his demonstration , he expounded a little on why the other argument was wrong. He used "wrong" in its aesthetic sense and gesticulated vaguely at the board to indicate what kind of structure the true argument required.
"I just knew there had to be this...splitting that wasn't in the other one. You said this is practically Sauer's lemma."
I waited as he watched me. Grasping that a response was advisable I answered Yes.
"Yeah, well." He shrugged and waved at the board.
I had the feeling of watching someone who can find water through divination, or a dog who can detect brain cancer by scent. I pursed my lips and nodded approvingly.
A few minutes later I left, and he returned to his mental safari. On the way back to my office I felt relief and loser's regrets.
I met him today, in his office, where he sat, thinking. He is approximately 40, with long lank white hair and a predilection for obsolete basketball shoes. On this afternoon he wore faded blue jeans and a purple golf shirt, somewhat unkempt at the collar. What he was actually doing would be difficult to say, though there was a notebook in his lap and a few hieroglyphs on his personal chalkboard.
I knocked tentatively on his door.
There was a time when I feared to interrupt his thinking, both for fear of losing his personal approbation and the inadvertent disruption of an idea being woven. On several occasions in our relationship he has declined to own my presence, as he focused his energy on himself, merely holding up a tangerine sized rubber ball in answer to my inquiries.
Today he smiled, as he does more often of late, having developed the unfortunate impression that I am capable of stimulating him in the least way intellectually. You could say I've been lucky lately. Thus there was a certain performance pressure as I stepped into his lair, at his slow behest. His desk was covered in feet of paper, as is usually the case, and he showed me three collaborative papers he was writing, each with its own notebook, stolen from the teaching supplies canteen.
He fumbled for a moment through one of them. After a moment he came to his notes, which I was flattered to discover contained a refutation of a proof I had presented in seminar the previous week.
"Was that your proof?" he asked, watching me with a pugnacious light in his eyes.
"No...It's Pollard's," I said. In truth it was my interpretation of Pollard, or an inchoate idea of his, which I had tried to phrase precisely.
"It's wrong," he said with palpable satisfaction in his polka style Wisconsin enunciation. "I'm almost glad it's not yours then."
He proceeded for the first time to show me a proof of his own during one of our scheduled weekly meetings. As he went along with his demonstration , he expounded a little on why the other argument was wrong. He used "wrong" in its aesthetic sense and gesticulated vaguely at the board to indicate what kind of structure the true argument required.
"I just knew there had to be this...splitting that wasn't in the other one. You said this is practically Sauer's lemma."
I waited as he watched me. Grasping that a response was advisable I answered Yes.
"Yeah, well." He shrugged and waved at the board.
I had the feeling of watching someone who can find water through divination, or a dog who can detect brain cancer by scent. I pursed my lips and nodded approvingly.
A few minutes later I left, and he returned to his mental safari. On the way back to my office I felt relief and loser's regrets.
posted by sevenfactorial at 9:30 PM
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