My Advisor

I stopped to see my dissertation advisor on Friday. I had some time between my two commitments, so I popped down to the UW campus to see him. It was just about as awkward as I expected it to be. He told me about his research, and I pretended to care. I told him about life outside the bubble, and he pretended to care.

My advisor is a nice guy. There is not a mean or a selfish bone in his body. The things that he is most generous with are the things that are most valuable to him -- his time and his ideas. During that brief period when I actually did mathematical research, he shaped and nurtured my ideas tremendously. I don't know that I would say that I couldn't have finished my dissertation without him, but it would have been vastly different.

He just lives on a totally different planet than I do. On his planet, the most exciting thing he could think of to share with me, after we really haven't seen each other for ten years, is that his research emphasis has shifted. He's no longer working in area X, which is what I studied, but has gravitated to area Y. Mind you, 99.9% of the people on the planet wouldn't know the difference, or care. I at least know the difference. But that's his life. He has his mathematical research, and nothing else really matters. That makes him a great researcher, but now that I'm not really interested in that, we don't have much to talk about.