Time appears and disappears

A lab full of sighs today — nobody looking forward to the long meetings that are back on the calendar now that my advisor is back from his work-vacation. Productivity has been unanimously high during this interlude, simply because we have had more time, but no one agrees on where all the extra hours appeared from.

Is it that meetings are distracting us from actual work? Not when the topic of discussion is our own project. (Although veering off into tangents happens more often than not.)

Is it that the stress of having results to show prevents us from actually getting those results? Not when we admit most of us would get nothing done if never held accountable. (Although not needing to show results by a set date does free us to get more done.)

It’s hard to decide where to draw the line when it comes to supervision; we each have unique quirks (which vary from week to week!) regarding how much of our advisor looking over our shoulder we can take.

Some of those meetings, however, should absolutely be emails.