The wake up call

[Received an email yesterday and am producing it here with the writer's permission.]

Hi,

I went to some links from your weekend reading list and found a post by Xykademiqz very interesting.  It brought back some memories.

I was a PhD student in a computational field in the late 1990s.  My advisor's lab was in the process of getting new computers.  This left several huge desks unoccupied for a few weeks. One day, during an extended weekend, I dutifully went to the lab and started playing Solitaire.  I don’t know what came over me, but before I knew it, I had climbed on one of those inviting, big desks and dozed off.  Much to my shock, my advisor also decided to come in that day and I woke up to find her staring at me.  She was visibly upset, but didn’t say much and simply asked me about a manuscript that we were working on.  I quickly printed out a rough draft of about 25 pages.  The manuscript had a mistake in the first sentence itself  - she took a quick look and immediately tossed it into a recycle bin.  “I would like to see a version which was written while you were awake,” she said. 

Although I did feel guilty at being caught in a “compromised” position, I felt hurt that she threw away the whole manuscript due to one mistake. 

“How dare she insult me? I will make her regret this.”

“So what if I was caught napping. At least, I showed up on a holiday.”

"Maybe I was unwell. She didn't even bother asking."

I walked out burning in shame and anger and cursed her (in my mind) for not recognizing and appreciating the genius I was. I did not speak to her for the next few days, not that she was bothered. I resolved to work again on the manuscript and show her a perfect version the next time.  I also thought I would tell her how much her acerbic remarks had hurt me and would demand an apology. 

As I started going through the paper, I realized that it was full of serious mistakes: it did, in fact, look like the work of a half-asleep mind.  This was a wake-up call.  All these days, I had thought of myself as this super-intelligent and perfect person who would soon dazzle the world with great discoveries.  I had been careless in writing things up and did not bother to proof read, delegating that task to her!  But, she made it absolutely clear that she would not look at it unless I did a professional job with it.  I jumped into it with complete seriousness this time.  I wrote and rewrote all the new results in as clear a manner I could, rearranged the data from top to bottom, did a proper literature survey and placed the work in the right context. I went through the sections time and again to detect any error, technical or typographical. 

After a month, the paper was ready to be shown to her.  By then, I had given up all thoughts of demanding any apology.  I started feeling a bit obliged for the timely wake up call.  This time, her reaction to the paper was completely different.  She appreciated the work, praised it during the next lab meeting and suggested immediate submission with me as the single author.

It is my proudest moment, ever.