Should have been more specific. The same people who have said that it unreasonable for me to *prefer *a certain type of communication are also defending the *preferences *of others for pure efficiency.
In a broader sense, I was trying to get, from those who seem to have no patience for certain types of complaining, a list of acceptable things to bitch about. You know, so I don’t keep embarrassing the millennials and all that. Maybe I should have posted about a cat dying or something?
I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove here.
Just because you want people to act a certain way doesn’t mean that they will comply. This appears to be true both for your professor and the people who have responded in this thread. In the end, the only person that you can change is yourself.
Or, what **Lobot **said. 
It’s definitely not only math people who do this. My husband is actually a math nerd and has better social skills than I do. I am more of an English person. I’ve had English teachers that were this way, people I’ve worked for, friends, family members; it’s very spread out. Some people just prefer to be to the point. I know that it can be hard to not take it personally, but it isn’t meant to be personal. Just think about how epic it will be when he finally says “Good job.” It will mean so much more coming from him.
No, it’s called basic human decency. As far as I’m concerned, if you don’t have it, you don’t get to call yourself human.
Some of the advice here is so jerkish that I lament that the only thing I can do is report it. Calling the poster a 13 year old girl because he has an anxiety disorder? How much more bigotted can you get?
Praising someone for doing something is a basic social skill, and if you can’t handle it, what the fuck are you doing in society?
Really? Even using Beamer? I’ve got to admit I’ve never seen a Powerpoint presentation that looks nice.
My supervisor sends e-mails like that. Then, he also sends e-mails with at least some encouragement in them. He likes to keep me on my toes.
Sorry, but I’m just getting so fed up with people defending people who can’t even be cordially nice to other human beings. Like I said, it’s a basic social skill, and a matter of respect. And I don’t care who you are, I will expect you to treat me with the respect I deserve.
I don’t have any sympathy for people who don’t do this, because I used to be that way–ignoring the person was one of the reasons I was misdiagnosed with Asperger’s. I learned that it is not acceptable and fixed it. If I can do it, anyone can.
BigT, I don’t view the e-mail that was sent to the OP as being rude, or even notably unpleasant. It’s sound advice. The OP chose to focus on the lack of cushioning and other extraneous text in the e-mail. He failed to notice that his supervisor took the time to read the presentation (which my supervisor only did for the first year of my PhD), and he was given really good advice by his supervisor on how to make the presentation better.
The email was respectful, just not catering to the OP’s issues with low self-esteem. And frankly, your supervisor is not your mother; at this level, it’s your own job to stay motivated and enthusiastic. You aren’t in kindergarten anymore
Really, BigT, where is the rudeness in the email? It was respectful (like I said) and constructive. An absence of rah-rah motivational encouragement is not rudeness, IMHO.
I agree that most eggheads could stand just an ounce more politeness in general, i.e. thanks for sharing that, please change this, or some such… but motivation and praise? This is your advanced degree you’re working on; you should be supplying your own motivation. Praise? That’s for the finished project, not for the intermediate mess.
When you’ve seen the comments of a real jerk, or inversely someone who lards their communications with so much socialization that you can’t extract the important message, then you’ll appreciate the beauty and convenience of direct, unambiguous criticism.
Plus, I should point out, it’s not like the advison’s email is devoid of positive comments. He calls the presentation “better,” and also points out that the “main message” is correctly conveyed.
So it’s not that the OP isn’t getting any praise, he’s just not getting enough praise.
On the flip side, this is a student/teacher relationship; the advisor has some responsibility to train the student to create good presentations. That means not only pointing out shortcomings, but also pointing out what works well, so the student knows what parts to keep and emulate, and what parts to rework or cut. If the advisor hasn’t done so, the OP has every right to be aggravated.
This. I wonder if you’ve ever read Berne’s theory of transactions - it certainly opened my eyes to how much I sought approval from others, including my boss, instead of trying to interact on a peer-peer basis. More importantly, it helped me realise that the feedback I got from others was precisely intended to encourage me to relate as an equal, and it frustrated people when I got upset and sulky because I wasn’t given feedback in the way I would like (or even the way I would do to them).
Equally, I realised that some of my staff don’t like the ‘sandwich’ approach, or praise - they just want to know how to improve without the fluff. Different strokes for different folks.
My company uses this and it is condescending beyond belief.
It’s also predictable: if I have a meeting with my superior where s/he says something nice at the beginning, then I know I’m in big trouble in the middle.
Two slices of something good surrounding a slice of something bad: my coworkers and I refer to it as “the shit sandwich”.
The email wasn’t rude, but it wasn’t polite either. A bit of courtesy in email communications never goes astray.
I think the OP’s suggested rewrite was probably going too far into touchy-feely territory, but if it had been something like:
then I’d imagine you wouldn’t have found it so curt.
I think the email was more curt than it needed to be, and I think it’s reasonable of you to think that. However, I get emails like that from various people every day of my working life, so it’s definitely not confined to academia or mathematics.
I wouldn’t worry about whether you belong to the group or not, on the basis of what you view as basic manners and ways of communicating with people. So long as you realise that not everyone has the same way of communicating as you, and don’t get too caught up in being suspicious that there’s some underlying reason why they’re being that way towards you, you’ll be fine.
I belong to one of the types who get all out of shape over written communication and email. A curtly worded one is enough to send me into a spiral of negative thinking and worrying. I’ve noticed that, and am now trying suspend my emotions till I can clarify or am calmer.
Do mathematicians tend to be curt and straight to the point? From my experience yes. I also found business and arts lecturers to be more windy, padding with praise and etc. In the end, though, though, I realize that I may be reading too much into it. I rather the person’s intention to be right and to be genuinely concern than how he or she said the words.
For statsman1982, I understand where you coming from, but email is just text, there are a lot of emotions we can miss with just written communication. Also, the email is related to work, not of one between friends. I know the thread is to ask whether math/technical people are such, but you seem to be more hang up on what he is saying…or not saying. He has pointed out problems, so I think the best way to deal with it is to work on those problems.
Some people just don’t care that much about emotions; some do. Your professor may express his concern and care in pointing out problems with your presentation, which when I think about it objectively, is more important than anyone’s emotions.
Besides this work communication. I am now accepting that at times people use email the same way as we use SMS. Something needs to be done, open up your email program, quickly describe the problem and send it away. It’s a matter of style.
You may have gotten it worse. Imagine the email you have gotten is such that he address you as the one having problems. “Why would you think equations in the presentation would help? Do you ever even think about what you are doing? Go remove the equations but somehow preserve the message”.
No amount of praise or padding before that would help.
Sorry, statsman1982, but I have to agree with Absolute, though it pains me to do so. Graduate school has outgrown the norm of praising the student for doing what he’s supposed to do. You’re there to do research, not feel good about yourself, and your adviser doesn’t care if you feel good about yourself.
Maybe everyone once in a while, some lucky grad student gets a really cool adviser, but that seems to be the exception, not the rule. I’ve read many of your posts and you seem like a really nice guy. One day, you’ll be the adviser, and whoever you advise will be lucky it’s you.
Too many words and equations, no clear conclussion. That is what is specifically wrong. He already pointed it out. He is expecting you to be able to rephrase your own writing without him having to hold your hand “OK, maybe we can take out this table… and shorten this sentence… in this three-step demo, we can take out the middle step as it’s self-evident…”
If he was going to do that, he’d end faster by doing the rewrite himself, but he doesn’t want to do that, he wants you to do it. You may wish to write back asking him for a couple of specific examples, if you truly can’t find anything to delete that won’t change the message and something to add at the end which will clarify it.
And FTR, the worst cases of “not enough feedback” I got were from my Spanish teachers, your closest equivalent would be English Lit and/or Writing courses. “Poor descriptions”; half a dozen teachers were unable to tell me how to enrich my descriptions (a computer programmer finally taught me how to do that). It’s got nothing to do with being a math person.
I agree.
I also agree.
And here’s where we part. The email in the OP was perfectly neutral. There was nothing to be offended about in there. There’s no disrespect whatsoever, unless you project your own insecurities onto it. Hell, I have friends I love dearly who write emails like that from time to time. As I said above, for me, I would take it as a sign of respect if my mentor felt he could communicate with me in such a direct, frank manner.
Just to fill in something which I have missed out; A different style of communication isn’t better or worse, it’s whether we could accept it. If the supervisor isn’t going to change his style of communication, or is not something which I am going to attempt to, I would just accept it and understand that no harm’s done.
Yes, I prefer an adviser style is encouraging; failing which, as long as the adviser is really looking out for me, I will try to accept it.
statsman, I will tell you this. Much more of the world runs on people skills than pure cognitive brainpower. You are in the corner that runs on brainpower (Myers-Briggs type T).
Your quantitative skills will kick butt over 99% of the business types out there. And your people skills (except needing a slightly thicker skin) will allow you to fit in and get along. The people-people of the world will be in awe of your math skills. There are business executives earning in the mid six figures who still ask questions about interpreting percentages, for crying out loud. It’s a case of “in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” Knowing and not fearing math is surprisingly rare among those who can actually get along well with people.
You may not be cut out for a career where you publish in the top math/ stats journals. But in terms of taking your quantitative skills into business or maybe from teaching into academic leadership/ administration, you will be miles ahead of the pure math types, and those jobs pay better. Just thicken your hide a bit, because you will also encounter executives/ politicians/ funders who don’t mince words.
Oh, and the reason your advisor gets a preference for communication style and you don’t is because he is at the top of the food chain. This again will always be true. You can set the tone for how your students address you, but if they don’t like having you mark up their papers in red, they don’t get to request blue ink.
Here’s an idea for you - when you send the next version to your advisor, use a sandwich. “Thank you for your suggestions. I’ve (blah blah, cut text and equations). Can you give me some suggestions about (whatever you think it would actually have been more helpful for his comments to focus on). I’m looking forward to making this a really good presentation blah blah.” I agree with you that this type of communication gets better results. Advisors may not think they are managing their grad students, but they would get a whole lot more productivity out of them if they actually used management skills.
Well, I just got another email and this time it was three words–“It’s looking good!” And you’re (those who mentioned this) right. It does mean a lot more coming from a parsimonious communicator such as he. I admit that, in retrospect, the email really wasn’t that harsh.’
As I mentioned in a post above, I think the reason I reacted the way I did was that the email came after a frustrating email back-and-forth where I couldn’t (seem) to get a straight answer because I wasn’t asking the right question. It was just sort of tip-of-the-iceberg.
Everyone is right (except the 13-year-old-girl thing. Really?). I need a thicker skin. My problem is that I just ascribe the worst possible motivations for people’s actions. “No praise? Then my work must be a piece of shit and I should just quit.” That’s my go-to thought. I’m trying to change. I wish that I didn’t care what other people said or did, I really do. I think life would be much more rewarding if I could shed some of my crippling emotions.
Oh, BigT, I tried to report a similarly-toned post for jerkish behavior, but was told that I can’t expect to hear what I want to hear. Now, I would wager that the 13-year-old-girl one and one or two others are jerkish by most people’s definition of the word, but apparently not the one employed on this board.