I met with my advisor this past Wednesday. The meeting went well enough, and I got some solid feedback from him on my dissertation draft. But overall, it was a decidedly mixed bag.

The Good: My advisor finally read my whole dissertation. One would think he might have read the whole thing at some point during the previous semester, where I gave him no fewer than half a dozen drafts. But no, apparently that was a bridge too far. Still, having evidence he has finally read the whole thing from end to end  is good (I had strong suspicions all last semester that he hadn’t read it that closely).

The Bad: Aside from apparently wasting most of last semester writing things that weren’t really being read, there is the fact that he crapped all over what I had written. Not that he called it bad, but it is all apparently way too shallow. Which would have been very nice to know last semester.

The Ugly: I’m now back to square one, starting with a blank sheet of paper and working up a new outline. I sent him the draft of the new outline on Friday. He told me he’d have comments to me on Monday, but then I’ve heard that before. Here’s hoping he’ll come through.

The bottom line is that I still have a fighting chance at finishing up this semester, but that chance just got a lot smaller. It’s going to be one damn hard semester.