I'm going to preface this by saying that my advisor once worked as an editor for a publishing house. So when I handed her a draft of my thesis proposal, I expected to get it back all marked up. And on that front, I was definitely not disappointed. There were markings galore. Entire sentences, hell, entire PARAGRAPHS had been reworded. And really, I'm okay with that. But what surprised me were the handful of POSITIVE comments about the proposal. Because honestly? It wasn't good. I mean really, really just not good. Of course, while I was reading the comments, I just couldn't shut out the cynical, sarcastic little voice that was jabbering away in my head, so I came up with some pessimistic translations of the comments:
-"There were many fine moments in this section." = "The rest of the proposal stinks like a dead fish in August."
-"This information was new to me." = "Sounds to me like you're just making this shit up."
-"I like this sentence, but maybe you should move it to this other paragraph." = "I am astounded by your utter incoherence. How did you ever get into grad school? I'm revoking your assistantship immediately."
-"Well done, just keep working." = "A passable first try, but judging by this proposal, you can expect to graduate in about 17 years."
So since I've failed miserably in my attempt to be an unfailingly cheerful optimist, I've decided to return to my inner cynic.
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