Frustrating advisor

[vogtalicious]

I have three people on my thesis committee, and the paper is done--if you're curious, the chair approved of it in it's fifth draft, not that it matters. Chair says it's fine, let's defend it. Other committee member says fine, let's defend it

Comments

[pansette]

One quick thought-- maybe instead of going by an "example paper," you should actually get the actual Publication Manual of the American Psychological Society (available on Amazon from 2 bucks used) and make sure you're not actually, you know, messing up the finer points of the style.

[brittdreams]

This is what I was thinking too. The university library also probably has a copy that you can reference.

[vogtalicious]

Er, my focus is not on psychology, so I don't know if I should use that manual or not.

I'm in Public Admin, and our style is APA from Purdue University's public system, a manual that I possess. I needed a clear picture of what this adviser wanted, and that example was what he gave me.

[dreamslesssweet]

Chances are, the info you'd need (how to format references, specifically) will be in the summary docs that Purdue has. All the info that the Purdue manual has *should* be the same as the APA manual, of course, so technically, you are using the APA manual. You can always take a trip to the library to look at the full manual, but it's probably not going to be necessary.

The guy wants you to suffer. I seriously doubt he cares about formatting. Most faculty don't give a crap about the format--they care about substance. Maybe he liked your paper and he felt the need to give you a hard time as kind of a hazing ritual.

Oh--have you spoken with some of his current and former students? Might be good to hear that you're not the only one, and maybe they have some ways of dealing with him.

[pansette]

Style guides deal with more than just citations, though. It seemed like at least a possibility that this professor-- though being an ass about it, clearly-- was noticing breaks from standard APA format, and that the difference might lie in the things that the citation guide does not cover that the (fairly exhaustive) style guide does.

Armchair analysis might be good for licking one's wounds and making the thing feel less like a "you suck moment," but if someone was blasting me like this for not going according to a particular style guide, my first instinct-- or at least my first pragmatic, useful one-- would be to have said style guide *IN HAND.*

[dreadpirateange]

Dude, when something like this happens to me, and I cry about it on my LJ, promise me that you'll point this out to me? I think I would totally miss something like this, though it makes a LOT of sense.

[pansette]

Definitely. And you do the same for me. My advisor is a stylistic hardass. This WILL come up in the future for me.

[poubelle]

Style guides deal with more than just citations, though. It seemed like at least a possibility that this professor-- though being an ass about it, clearly-- was noticing breaks from standard APA format, and that the difference might lie in the things that the citation guide does not cover that the (fairly exhaustive) style guide does.

Yes, yes, yes.

Our office has an abbreviated guideline to CMS that we created for quick reference, but people are supposed to abide by CMS in full. Being one of the two in the office who is familiar with CMS and refers to it regularly (we have an office account, goodness!), I know that I'm prone to sending things back to people with notes on following X rule per section Y. I hope that I don't come across as this crazy, though....

[vogtalicious]

Many students have had him, and many students horribly regret having him. He's rumored to be fairly manic, and I've dealt with his attitude before when I was put on probation (I had a 3.2). He basically screamed at me in front of the dean of the graduate school. To be frank, I felt more humiliated for him than anything else. Later, he defended my idea for my thesis, saying it was innovative and neat. Now he's....yeah.

Maybe bi-polar? I don't know, psych is not my field!