Fool me twice

Even though no one is reading this blog, venting is still helping.

Despite yesterday's lesson I fell for my advisor's trap again today. The funny thing is that I don't think he is misleading me on purpose. It just seems to me that he is so disjoint from the reality that the interpretations of his actions and intentions require a very heavy dose of pessimism. He really truly does not care. Wow... I'm learning though.

So today I got an email from him, which almost sounded positive to me. Positive! Hello?! What kind of idiot am I? Didn't I just say yesterday, that he never ever sends me anything positive? Why am I so easily fooled? Sigh. So anyways, all he asked was a list of all the courses I've taken. Quite a reasonable request. Except that he doesn't need to ask me to send it to him, since he has access to that information. But ok, I get it. My time is not as important as his. Fine.

He also said that we will "go from there". I thought, hey that means that we will look over the courses, choose some, go into details about specific topics and everything will be hunky-dory. Right? Wrooong, because you know what he asks in the next email? "Are you sure you've taken enough classes?" Now you can see that I'm an idiot. Optimistic one at that.

You don't understand what it means? Well it sounds like he is checking if I am even eligible to take the oral exam. I thought he was making a tiny step forward, but it turns out to be a step back. Ha, why oh why am I still surprised by these turnarounds? I should expect them. See them coming two emails ahead. Yet I never do.

If you are still not shocked, please be. I'll explain. I've been done with my coursework for almost 2 years now. That's right. I have not taken one class in the last 3 semesters, because I'm done with my coursework and surprise-surprise I need to take my oral exam. If he had any inkling that I needed more classes and he knew I'm not taking any, why didn't he suggest I do something about it? A reasonable person would assume it means he agrees that the required coursework was in fact completed. But the truth is he simply doesn't care and he will only care when it suits him.

Oh. It gets better. Last year he signed all of the paperwork which grad school requires to confirm that what? right. that I've completed the required coursework. Haha. Well, at least I have a proof now in case he wants to back out. Whew. Actually I should send him a reminder before he starts going in that direction.

Anyways. It is the end of workday and I'm all worked up again about this whole oral exam shenanigan. Got to get something done though today. My plan did not count in things like "fall apart for 24 hours, because your advisor does not care about you".