The title just means “I have had enough, and can take no more”

This is a post that’s been long pending. But now as I sit and wait for my finite element analysis engine to churn out some meaningful results for my rubber model, I have time to finish the post.

I have often wondered how people, now matter how different individually, have some very common traits professionally. Professors, for example, always have this rather uncanny habit of expecting students to do much more than what they had initially asked for. And this usually comes at a time when the student is nearing the completion of his degree and wrapping up his work, and expecting to be done.One such conversation excerpt goes like this:

Professor : So how was the week and how did the work progress ?
Student : Not too bad, though hectic. I was able to complete the work that you had assigned to me, and here are the results.
Professor : Excellent, the results look great, pretty much along the lines we had expected.
Student :Yes, I am pretty happy with the way the things shaped up.
The student is pretty happy, but he knows his professor too well, and knows what’s going to come next.
Professor : So, I am assuming with this out of the way, and you having some more time, why don’t we get started (yes !! get started ) on the work, that we had discussed couple of weeks back. I am sure it should not take a lot of time to complete and also, it would be a good addition to your research.
The poor “desi” student always reveres his professor and often struggles using the words like “No”, “maybe some other time”, ” sorry, not this time” etc.
Student : Alrite, Dr. X, I will give it a try to get it done before the end of next week.

And this usually goes on for a long time, and the poor student usually ends up doing two times more the work that he was initially expected to do. Not that he did not gain much wanted experience and knowledge, but it is just unnecessary pressure right towards the end, which is probably unwarranted. I am sure there are many students who share this sentiment.

On one hand, the student feels desperate and wants to curse the time when he decided to work for Dr. X, but on the other hand, he knows for sure that having worked for more than a year or so on that research, it would be difficult for Dr. X to find someone else to carry on that work ahead. Professors are not usually not to be blamed, because it is the nature of research. It almost never seems to have an end. A professor of mine had once remarked, “Research is all about knowing when to jump from 1 to 2, or else you will never be completing it.”

I am going to be back soon with a post on a certain species of people, who can be seen wearing khaki’s shirts/pants (usually) and seen inside a three-wheeler (auto-rickshaw). Yes, I am referring to autodrivers.