Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to comment on this thread explaining the most awesome thing you've done this month. You may be as blatantly proud of yourself as you feel. You may unabashedly consider yourself the coolest freaking person ever because of that awesome thing you're dying to tell everyone about. This is the place to do just that.
Remember, however, that this isn't any kind of progress thread. Nor is it any kind of proposal thread. This thread is solely for people to talk about the awesome things they have done. Not "will do". Not "are working on". Have already done. This is to cultivate an environment of object level productivity rather than meta-productivity methods.
So, what's the coolest thing you've done this month?
(I think this is the most recent thread, so anything since January is fair game, assuming you haven't already mentioned it.)
Thank you, this is helpful information, and reinforces my notion that for reasons I can't figure out, emails are never useful for communicating anything other than practical matters with superiors.
Was this your first time having a boss? / generally being in a position where a stranger was in a position of formal power in this way? The first time I had a boss I kept getting this impression that he thought I wasn't doing enough...but then I realized that he actually thought I was pretty great and that people in dominant positions are often sort of aloof and curt towards those underneath them, and this is behavior is more-or-less independent of how much they like you.
Sometimes I wonder if there is a selection effect (where people who succeed in making minions a bit nervous, intentionally or not, get harder-working minions and therefore climb ranks faster)
It wasn't my first time, but it was my first time having to work that hard for someone's attention professionally. He not only had power, he also had incentives not to take me on (not enough time, high-risk low-reward, sets a precedent of accepting younger students, etc.). Dr. C has definitely become friendlier to me recently, although I still find him harder to charm than most of the people I work with. I think part of that is that yes, it works for him to make people a nervous and concise. I think he's also just socially awkward as well.