Do you know what we have every week? We have journal club. You're thinking, okay, journal club, not so painful, is it now?
At 8:30. Every week.
Well, 8:30 isn't that early! And you get to hear about an interesting paper or two.
And also we get to hear many, many uninteresting papers. Because each person gets seven minutes, the Book Report edition of journal club.
Scientific discussions on the merits of the papers are good for you!
And I quote 'We don't have time to discuss the science! Next!'
At least it's for your own good. So you can learn things. And be ever so conversant with the literature.
Yes. I now have an excellent breadth of knowledge on decorative-welding tournaments, the mechanisms of book writing, and other topics utterly unrelated to my work. And really? It's so my advisor can take notes for his !@#$% book.
Err.. at least it couldn't get much worse?
Aha! No! My advisor has added the joy of his timer. He's brought a timer that ticks. Which can't seewe. Tocktocktocktocktocktock. Tocktocktocktocktocktock. Tocktocktocktocktocktock bzzzzzzzzzzzzzbzzzz.
Now imagine this for an hour and a half, weekly.
I wonder: if I grabbed the timer halfway through my paper, smashed it with a hammer, and then continued presenting... would anyone notice?
Or I could try 'Your timer annoys the living hell out of me and the noise is so distracting that I'd rather be poked by hot needles. Could we PLEASE use this normal, non-buzzing timer???'
Except maybe a little more polite.
