Things here have, let's just say, gotten a bit out of hand. 'Tis not helping that I've lately been either traveling or having deep troubles with the lifelong bane of my existence, sleep.
It's my advisor's birthday today. I would refer to him by some past-implicative term like "dissertation advisor" if I didn't still regularly call him for advice. A phrase that I picked up from him and have since plagiaristically repeated when talking to graduate students is that "all advisors have their strengths and their weaknesses." My advisor's main weakness from my standpoint is that our sociology interests really don't overlap that much, which is not exactly something I can blame him for. Meanwhile, one of my advisor's great strengths is a great strength to have in an advisor: he's as good as anyone I have ever known at giving advice. The main parts of this skill are having a good strategic mind and being able to articulate that reasoning well, but another part is being able to do so with conviction. Me, even when I feel like I have useful advice to give, I often provide it very tentatively, like I'm afraid the person will actually take it because then I'll feel responsible and guilty if things don't work out.
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You are better at giving advice than you realize. You even have a special "I'm being serious and giving you advice now" voice (it's like half an octave deeper than your usual), which often is a helpful indication that advice is being given. When you hedge, it's by giving advice in the form of questions, as in, "well, do you want suffer interminably? because if not, you don't want to do 'x'."
If anyone shows any sign of contemplating actually following my advice, I generally panic and try to convince them that I don't know what I'm talking about, in order to avoid the guilt if it doesn't work out. I even do this in lab, when I have hard evidence to back up my advice...
there are moments in your advice giving in which you are clever.
That last comment wasn't me.
Last time I called you nearly in tears, you had great advice for me.
Have you ever been a patient at a sleep clinic? I was having seriously interrupted sleep and went to a sleep doc who recommended I do a sleep study. The technicians hook you up to various machines via electrodes and monitor you all night long. Granted, since you have fitful sleep already, you might not sleep a wink in this type of scenario but unless you are not sleeping at all, they would be able to collect at least cat nap data on you. That way you can hopefully get to the root of the cause. Well, that is supposing that you don't already know the root. Although, I imagine if you did that you would be actively trying to repair the root so as to stamp out sleep as the bane of your existence. Anywho, I recommend it as it helped me a great deal.
~A~
jeremy's last advice to me was to give it a month before i freaked out about something. it was pretty helpful, but now it has been a month. i think i need jeremy to give me a bit more guidance.
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