MetaChat - Ask MeCha

MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter. Questions? Check the FAQ. Please note: This is important.

27 October 2006

Ask MeCha I just had my last annual PhD advisory committee meeting, which includes my supervisor and three other faculty members. (My thesis itself will be examined by total strangers, for alleged objectivity purposes.) This was really an unpaid volunteer activity for all of them. What would be a good way to thank them?→[More:]They're all men. I've thought of making cookies. Although I won't be able to get them to everyone because one is in Germany, and another is a department that is 12 miles away from my own (possible but difficult).

Maybe just thank-you notes would be better?

post by: grouse at: 05:38 | 8 comments

Take them on a night out. I'm thinking a drunken rampage around Cindies, Life and Coco's, followed by kebabs from Gardies and a spot of PUI*.

...hmm, on second thoughts...

*punting under the influence.

posted by matthewr 27 October | 06:55

We bring doughnuts to our committee meetings and go out for beer (sometimes) afterwards. Maybe take them to a local pub and buy a couple pitchers and some eats?

posted by LunaticFringe 27 October | 07:11

matthewr: I'm sure my supervisor would have been up for it a few years ago, but now he has a family in London. The others, maybe not so much :)

It would really be impossible to get them together again due to their busy schedules. Also since one is in Germany. I need to do something that I can deliver asynchronously.

posted by grouse 27 October | 07:28

Also, when are we doing a Cambridge meetup, matthewr? ;)

posted by grouse 27 October | 07:29

No! There are rules about this.

You want to "pay it back"? Of course. Be really, really, really nice to your graduate students. Buy them meals whenever you can. Anytime you go to a function of theirs, bring really good wine (or hooch, or whatever fits).

Say "thank you" to all involved, but save the food and grog buying business for *your* graduate students.

You will have graduate students. You should be nice to them. That's how it works.

But that's in the future. Oh, maybe months from now.

I would say "congratulations", but that would be a jinx, and I wait with anticipation for your announcement. You are going to tell us, right?

posted by GeckoDundee 27 October | 10:42

two words: lap dance.

posted by jonmc 27 October | 11:00

Well, we'd better have a meetup before you leave, grouse. Do you graduate (or whatever the terminology for PhDs is) in May/June? Or are you staying on to become, one day, Regius Professor Grouse?

posted by matthewr 27 October | 11:13

You are going to tell us, right?

Sure, but that will be in about a year.

The terminology for PhDs is to "submit" although sometimes I feel like we've been doing that the whole time! Of course we graduate if we pass our vivas, but not everyone sticks around in Cambridge for the whole time after submission. Some come back just for their viva and graduation, some only for the viva, and graduate in absentia.

Unlikely that I'll graduate by June. But this might be my last complete Michaelmas term.

posted by grouse 27 October | 20:16

← OMG! Bunny Sneeze! || Photo Friday - →

HOME || REGISTER || LOGIN