More than slightly bitter

This time, I would like some serious red ink. I'm only going to ask this of you once over the three years, and after that I'll be fine on my own, I'll get the thesis professionally spell-checked and handed in near the 3 year-mark. And it will be a good thesis and will have been a quiet, diligent and mostly unproblematic student.

I would like you to really engage with what I've done. And I've read your stuff, I know what you're capable of. And I also know that I've not been getting that level of engagement. You just make do with whatever is on top of your head when we meet.

At the beginning, I thought this was legitimate, because I was on a steep learning curve and there was a lot of work I needed to do on my own before I could feel able to argue my points with you. Now I find it unforgivably paternalistic that you should devote plenty of time and wit to peer-reviewing anonymous articles and grant-proposals but deny this level of engagement to your own students on the grounds that "they're very good already".

Plainly, this is offensive. You are willing to share your wisdom to improve a stranger's work but not your own students' work. You are quite content to leave us right there in our mediocrity, to assert your superiority ("but it's excellent work at your level"), and because you don't gice a rat's ass about our work beyond submissions within research council deadlines and formal success in the viva.

I've always accepted it as a tacit contract that I would not waste your time and I never once did. In fact, I have demanded precious little of your time. But we now reach the point at which I resent you wasting MY TIME by showing up utterly unprepared and teaching me nothing. Right now, I am deeply insulted that you should consider my work, and me as a person, unworthy of your attention.

I think a little agonistic action is in order: at this stage you get to write the meanest, most insightful, most trenchant comments you can think of. Meanwhile, I get to read your wicked critique from hell it in the comfort of my own home, regain my composure with eye-pads and chamomile, get over it, address each single comment, and only then come out to face the world again.