When I was preparing for my thesis defense a long time ago, my supervisor's choice of external examiner had a lot of profs felt sorry for me. Even I thought it's one of those bad ideas that my boss won't understand until it's over - it would just end with a "oh wells" and a shrug on his part but many months of grief for me. Dr. L is known for his abrasive personalities and arrogance. He will shred you to pieces if you're an idiot - most ppl are idiots to him. The fact that he is very intelligent is the icing on my funeral cake. I felt my only consolation was that everyone who ever endured his verbal insult will feel for me when I am carried out of the room.
Of course, he turned out to be 10x nicer than his reputation during my exam, and my boss is still in my good books for not tossing me to the bear. According to my boss (afterwards) he would never do that to me, and that Dr. L has really soften down now that he is older. When I met him a few days before my defense at a local conference (source of funding for inviting him from USC), I talked to him about his work, just to get a feel of his attitude and because I was genuinely curious about his once infamous invention that we suddenly don't hear much about anymore. According to him the idiots/lawyers who ran the biomedical company responsible for commercialization of the product screwed things up. When he said "they were so stupid I can't even talk to them," I understood why all his peers/senior professors came to give me a pep talk/wish me luck during the conference about my defense.
For all kinds of reasons, including legal and intellectual property issues, there has been no progress on the development of his invention for the last 10 years. "Yes, it is very frustrating, especially when you have spent the most part of your career on it. But I've been through enough to know that things like that happen, sometimes you wait it out and things turn around, sometimes it doesn't. But if you are really good, you will come up with another idea. A much better one. Maybe it is arrogant to think that, but you need that kind of arrogance if you want to survive in this field. Because ppl get hung up on it when they don't think they are that good. If you think you just got lucky with a good idea and you probably won't have a better one in your entire career, you won't be able to move on when it didn't work out. You became bitter about your work/research. You can't do good research like that."
I often think about what he said these days. Almost as often as I think about Esther's advice to me when I decided to do more school. "I can tell you in advance that more than once, you will feel like you can't take it anymore, you just want to quit. It's ok, you'll get over it. And then you'd be glad you didn't quit."
I'm sorry if I'm boring you (but it is my blog). I feel like an old lady reminiscing about an old story. But these things that I remember, they help me feel better when I don't feel sure, which is often. I'm grateful for that.
Of course, he turned out to be 10x nicer than his reputation during my exam, and my boss is still in my good books for not tossing me to the bear. According to my boss (afterwards) he would never do that to me, and that Dr. L has really soften down now that he is older. When I met him a few days before my defense at a local conference (source of funding for inviting him from USC), I talked to him about his work, just to get a feel of his attitude and because I was genuinely curious about his once infamous invention that we suddenly don't hear much about anymore. According to him the idiots/lawyers who ran the biomedical company responsible for commercialization of the product screwed things up. When he said "they were so stupid I can't even talk to them," I understood why all his peers/senior professors came to give me a pep talk/wish me luck during the conference about my defense.
For all kinds of reasons, including legal and intellectual property issues, there has been no progress on the development of his invention for the last 10 years. "Yes, it is very frustrating, especially when you have spent the most part of your career on it. But I've been through enough to know that things like that happen, sometimes you wait it out and things turn around, sometimes it doesn't. But if you are really good, you will come up with another idea. A much better one. Maybe it is arrogant to think that, but you need that kind of arrogance if you want to survive in this field. Because ppl get hung up on it when they don't think they are that good. If you think you just got lucky with a good idea and you probably won't have a better one in your entire career, you won't be able to move on when it didn't work out. You became bitter about your work/research. You can't do good research like that."
I often think about what he said these days. Almost as often as I think about Esther's advice to me when I decided to do more school. "I can tell you in advance that more than once, you will feel like you can't take it anymore, you just want to quit. It's ok, you'll get over it. And then you'd be glad you didn't quit."
I'm sorry if I'm boring you (but it is my blog). I feel like an old lady reminiscing about an old story. But these things that I remember, they help me feel better when I don't feel sure, which is often. I'm grateful for that.
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