Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Can You Spell Intimidation?

Tomorrow morning I have a master's defense. The paper is not so good, and will have to be revised substantially before I will sign off. The ideas of the paper are great; there are some good sections, but at both surface and deep levels, the paper has problems.

Today I have received two voice mails (one on my office phone; one on my cell) and two emails outlining why I should sign off on the paper. From the student's advisor.

The latest voice mail asked to meet with me face-t0-face for thirty minutes this evening so we could talk about the student's paper.

WTF?

My response:

I will not return the phone calls. I will not meet with the advisor face-to-face. I will not sign off on the student's paper, I expect to see substantial revisions before I will sign off, and I plan to have a frank conversation with this advisor after the defense is over about the attempt to leverage my signature.

Annoyed, to put it mildly.

9 comments:

Musey_Me said...

Weird. Why is the advisor trying to arm-twist you into signing? Is making revisions such a bad thing?

Dr. Bad Ass said...

I know! I'm just about to go to the defense -- will post again afterward.

Amanda said...

Wow. What a jerk. Why in the world would s/he be lobbying for you to sign off on the student's paper without revisions? Revisions are pretty standard in my field. It's just strange...

Erin said...

My advisor tried to do this for the guy who defended before me...with the result that our entire department changed the policy so that all dissertations and theses had to be completely approved as written BEFORE a defense date could even be set.

It drives me crazy when advisors don't hold their students to a high standard. I hope the defense was at least good.

Belle said...

It sounds like the advisor has not done hir job. If you sign off, then you participate in the problem, no?

Kim said...

Ugh! Why do so many people want to sacrifice doing it right for the easy way out! NCLM

Rebecca (Ramblings by Reba) said...

Oh my. I would be livid. Ugh...

NCLM

Pamela T. said...

So, what happened? I hope you let 'em have it...

Jen said...

That is so pathetic of them!