I Have The Best Supervisor Ever 2

I had a great meeting with my second supervisor yesterday. I think retired life agrees with her – she was in a better mood than I’d ever seen her in before.

We talked about my analysis together, talked stats, went through the calculations I’d made. It turns out my stats are right, but it’s difficult to justify why the effects I’ve found should be of theoretical interest. My supervisor asked if I’d looked at some of my other variables instead – ones I had originally been interested in, but didn’t bother exploring very much because the nature of the data didn’t fit the tests I could do and, more importantly, it didn’t occur to me that there could be a way to change the nature of the data. Of course, it turns out there is, and now, thanks to her, I know how to do it.

I love talking about statistics. The philosophy of statistics is bizarre, ironic, and contradictory. Statistics can be mind-blowing – just when you think you have the answer, it escapes you. There are strengths and weaknesses, advantages and disadvantages, pros and cons to everything. There are assumptions and conditions in which you can violate assumptions. There are multiple ways of doing the same thing, and multiple ways of deciding which way to do it. I still have the undergraduate reflex of flinching when I see a significant p value, but I have matured enough to put my excitement to one side and check other indicators of significance, and dilute my enthusiasm with caution for sample sizes, skewed distributions, and Type I errors.

For all her coldness, I have a great second supervisor. She knows her stuff, and she likes it when you share her passion for stats. We had some great ideas, and she showed me how to do things I hadn’t even thought about before. My final study was going to go in some bizarre, barely-justfiable direction I wasn’t even sure I was interested in, simply because that was the only area in which I could find results worth reporting. Now I see results worth reporting aren’t merely the significant ones – they’re the ones that spark theoretical interest. I’m not going to do what I thought I had to do – I’m going to go back to what I was originally interested in, and reanalyse that data. I didn’t find much of interest in it the first time round, but, thanks to my supervisor, and the beauty of stats, I find there are things in my data worth talking about.

Wow.

This is a great feeling.

I’m in the game again! Maybe I’ll even get my head around this thing!

I Have 4 Hours To Get My Head Straightened.

My supervisor is going to be here in just over 4 hours. Perhaps I should clarify – my second supervisor, with whom I am meeting this afternoon, is a retired emeritus professor and lives in a small village in the middle of nowhere, a good three hours’ commute away from London. Fortunately, after several distasteful altercations with our head of department, she got permission to claim for travel expenses to come to London once in a while and discuss stats with me. She wouldn’t hear of me being given a replacement supervisor. “I will supervise you no matter what,” she said. God bless.

Except that now that she lives three hours away (on a good day), however much she has much more time to spend on our own research, I feel guilty about calling her in to see me because of all the time and stress it involves. And now that I have called her in for our meeting today, the pressure is on to show her that it was worth it!

My second supervisor is a little different from my first, although ironically, the two have known each other for donkey’s years and are the best of friends. My second supervisor is very focused, likes to get down to business immediately, and hates it when you make a fuss about anything. Until recently, she seemed to be irritated even by simple social conventions like saying “How are you?”, at the start of a meeting. I always felt silly asking her this, even though I would ask out of genuine interest rather than just paying lip service to British politeness, because she would give me a cold reply like “OK.” and not even return the enquiry. Fortunately though, perhaps because we have had some very in-depth debates about stats and psychometric theory in which she really seemed to enjoy herself, she has warmed up a bit and now actually asks me how I am back.

Now that’s progress.

Anyway, the fact that she has warmed to me isn’t the point here. The point is that she has a very focused way of working in which she likes to examine things in detail in advance, have a think about it, and only then hold a meeting. I’ve known this for some time and have, since then, always emailed her my datafiles and notes in advance. Whilst this helps her understand my questions better, and allows her to come prepared, I’ve found I feel very stressed between emailing her my stuff and meeting her, simply because of my anxiety about all the embarrassing mistakes I imagine she’ll find in my work. I keep thinking, “I’m a psychologist. Psychologists have rigorous academic training in statistics and research methods from year 1 right up to PhD level. I’m supposed to be on the ball with everything stats related. And here I am still having to look up ANOVAs in a textbook! I’m hopeless! My supervisor is going to eat me alive! I’ll never amount to anything! My thesis is going to suck! I’m going to fail my viva! And end up homeless and penniless on the streets!”

Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

These irrational thoughts are still stuck in my head even now, as I write this. It’s maddening. I know I have put in a good effort to try my hand at the analysis, so as not to make my supervisor feel like I am dumping my work at her feet and saying “Here. Just tell me the answer.” She hates that. She hates dumb, needy students coming to her and begging her to just tell them the answer, or, worse, to actually do their work for them. But still, I feel like I’m not going to be able to live up to her standards, like I have not done enough work to impress her, and like I am going to be left feeling like an idiot – not just for not being smart enough, but for wasting her time.

I have 4 hours to get my head straightened. I have to review my analysis, make sure all my datafiles are saved on my flashdrive, reread my notes, pick up the keys to the meeting room, and get everything set up early. I concede these things will not actually do much to get my head straightened, but they will, hopefully, distract me from the madness that’s brewing inside.