Turning the corner on GSR angst

They tell me the best sign you are ready to graduate is when you can't stand your boss anymore. I've been trying to move past the science equivalent of teen angst ("he doesn't notice how smart I am," "he doesn't understand what it is like to do these experiments!"), and today I think we turned a corner. And it was a corner that I really thought would be a clif. See, I tend to get irritated with my boss when he takes too much interest in what I am doing. He isn't usually up to the minute on things, so I feel like I have to slow way down and reach WAY back to explain things to him. (Picture adolescent eye-roll here) Other methods to tame my attitude were only partially effective (patience, looking for my own errors instead if his, setting my expectations more realistically), but I was pretty confident that the togetherness of actually writing a paper together would push my patience past the brink. Fortunately for everyone involved, I was wrong.

We are writing a part of a paper, for a collaborator, which is serving as a nice dumping ground for some data we can't follow up on. We got involved in this madness about a month ago, at which time Dr. Boss suggested I try (as a Go For It experiment) an extra experiment that would round out the data nicely. We want to get it done by early November. But we needed some more details, and there was waiting, and then I was kinda slacking last week... and yesterday, my slightly flustered boss says they want EVERYthing done by Saturday- which means we need to get it out by Friday, which means.... I need to get that experiment done! And also the written part, and make the figures. Arg!

I didn't want Dr. Boss to think I wasn't taking this opportunity (big opportunity for me) seriously, so I mashed out the data- but the writing, I can't really fake. Fortunately, he can. So I spent half an hour in his office today, writing up one short part of the paper. And it was really good- I felt like the paper was better because we both wrote it, and I felt like he'd say that too. He kept saying things like "Good point" and "Well put." I didn't feel defensive about it (since I didn't have anything written before), so it actually seemed quite collaborative. Awesome!

A relevant side note, my technical writing isn't any better than it was in high school. I still write like you get charged per period, and my liberal use of tenses makes me seem like a time traveler. Ah well, with luck, we'll write a couple more papers.