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End of phase one.
May. 12th, 2006 01:52 pmWell, that concludes the taught portion of our course. I just gave my project presentation, and although the perfectionist in me would've liked to have done a few things differently, general consensus seems to be that it was good. Also, my supervisor told me he'd read my literature review and found it to be excellent. Woohoo!
On the negative side for presentations, the annoying professor from the benthos module (the one who was so fond of his cleverness and the big words he used improperly) brought up the option of using water in which male cuttlefish had been "soaked" instead of putting the actual animals in the Y-maze and as he paused there I assumed that was his entire point and said yes, that had been done in previous experiments. I was going to say the reason I wasn't doing that was b/c I was concerned about degradation of chemical signals, but evidently he assumed I needed the process spelled out for me so he asked in this haughty tone of voice, "If I can continue...", like how dare I interrupt his brilliance. And of course his further explanation revealed nothing that I hadn't inferred in the first suggestion. I gave him a look, but didn't say anything b/c I didn't really want to make a scene in front of my supervisor. Just, argh. I really hate that man. Don't ask questions if you're not going to give us a chance to answer, and rules of etiquette aren't only one way, so if you don't want to be interrupted, maybe you shouldn't interrupt yourself.
I also really dislike it when professors who obviously know nothing about the animals you're studying bring up another method and once you've listened to what they have to say you know from the literature that such a method wouldn've work in your animals b/c of various reasons. Then they look all affronted when you contradict them despite being able to site studies.
Seriously, half the time spent during questions is the various staff arguing amongst themselves about experimental design. Yesterday we could tell there was a serious rift b/w two of them - they obviously disliked each other immensely and although it was amusing at times it really wasn't very conducive to a positive environment. We've still got a few more talks to go, but damn, I'm tired of them.
Still, almost over now. And then I can relax for at least the weekend. I'm going to Portsmouth on the 23rd or so to get some more cuttlefish eggs, so that should be fun.
On the negative side for presentations, the annoying professor from the benthos module (the one who was so fond of his cleverness and the big words he used improperly) brought up the option of using water in which male cuttlefish had been "soaked" instead of putting the actual animals in the Y-maze and as he paused there I assumed that was his entire point and said yes, that had been done in previous experiments. I was going to say the reason I wasn't doing that was b/c I was concerned about degradation of chemical signals, but evidently he assumed I needed the process spelled out for me so he asked in this haughty tone of voice, "If I can continue...", like how dare I interrupt his brilliance. And of course his further explanation revealed nothing that I hadn't inferred in the first suggestion. I gave him a look, but didn't say anything b/c I didn't really want to make a scene in front of my supervisor. Just, argh. I really hate that man. Don't ask questions if you're not going to give us a chance to answer, and rules of etiquette aren't only one way, so if you don't want to be interrupted, maybe you shouldn't interrupt yourself.
I also really dislike it when professors who obviously know nothing about the animals you're studying bring up another method and once you've listened to what they have to say you know from the literature that such a method wouldn've work in your animals b/c of various reasons. Then they look all affronted when you contradict them despite being able to site studies.
Seriously, half the time spent during questions is the various staff arguing amongst themselves about experimental design. Yesterday we could tell there was a serious rift b/w two of them - they obviously disliked each other immensely and although it was amusing at times it really wasn't very conducive to a positive environment. We've still got a few more talks to go, but damn, I'm tired of them.
Still, almost over now. And then I can relax for at least the weekend. I'm going to Portsmouth on the 23rd or so to get some more cuttlefish eggs, so that should be fun.
