kraigus shmeggus (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} kraig) wrote,@ 2008-05-01 23:38:00 |
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Academic collaborators
I don't know how anybody gets a damn thing done in collaboration. Maybe when you're both equal partners it's different, but trying to help Linda finish off a 5 page paper was hell. We did a couple of hours last week, and then tonight about 2.5 hours, but it felt like 12. At the end of it we had roughly 6 pages of reasonably well-written paragraphs that had a decent flow. She's going over a printout figuring out ways to work around the couple of XXX CHANGEME and XXX PARAPHRASE BETTER statements I inserted, and I'm about to get a (well-deserved, I think) beer.
But there have been at least a couple of times I wanted to snap, and I'm sure the same goes for her. At least she didn't cry this time, and I didn't stomp off for an hour-long break. I can't even imagine trying to do something more complex, especially if both people have something actually invested in it. All I wanted from this was to give her drug-addled mind a break. (She's on strong painkillers for her back problems.)
Linda's paper is about the speech John Kerry gave to the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1971, by the way, and it was a very good one, although one of her secondary sources was all but fellatious in its tone. Published in 2004, how convenient.
... I forgot to transfer the beer from the freezer to the fridge, and now it's half-frozen. Crap. No sweet sweet alcoholic bliss for me.
I don't know how anybody gets a damn thing done in collaboration. Maybe when you're both equal partners it's different, but trying to help Linda finish off a 5 page paper was hell. We did a couple of hours last week, and then tonight about 2.5 hours, but it felt like 12. At the end of it we had roughly 6 pages of reasonably well-written paragraphs that had a decent flow. She's going over a printout figuring out ways to work around the couple of XXX CHANGEME and XXX PARAPHRASE BETTER statements I inserted, and I'm about to get a (well-deserved, I think) beer.
But there have been at least a couple of times I wanted to snap, and I'm sure the same goes for her. At least she didn't cry this time, and I didn't stomp off for an hour-long break. I can't even imagine trying to do something more complex, especially if both people have something actually invested in it. All I wanted from this was to give her drug-addled mind a break. (She's on strong painkillers for her back problems.)
Linda's paper is about the speech John Kerry gave to the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1971, by the way, and it was a very good one, although one of her secondary sources was all but fellatious in its tone. Published in 2004, how convenient.
... I forgot to transfer the beer from the freezer to the fridge, and now it's half-frozen. Crap. No sweet sweet alcoholic bliss for me.
