| What Your Supervisor Says |
| What Your Supervisor Means |
| Look on this as a learning experience. |
You are going to suffer. |
| I am here to lend you support. |
I am here to destroy you so you do not look smarter than me. |
| I would like to have had more time to study this. |
I did not read this. |
| Your research is an interesting application of my own work. |
Why didn't I think of this before you did? |
| You have failed to take into account some of the more relevant
literature. |
You did not cite papers I wrote. |
| I would like you to explain... |
I do not know anything about this. |
| Your statistical results don't seem to support your hypothesis. |
I don't understand statistics. |
| How did you ensure that you had drawn a random sample? |
I had to come up with at least one question, and this one always works. |
| Could you step out of room while the committee comes to a decision? |
We decided beforehand to give you your degree, but we still want to make
you sweat some more. |
Graduate School Terminology