These few days was tiring and frustrating. I was emailing here and there just for the sake of getting the internal examiners' signature as well as to discuss the corrections I made. The worst case was being scolded by my supervisor (he was known for his grumpy attitude-- many people know about this). I was surprised being scolded like a child in front of his staff and some students at his office. The use of the words "useless" as in this sentence, "you're useless" or rather in Malay "you tak boleh pakai" was something that I always remembered in this journey of getting my Phd. I was told by his staff that that day (the day I met him that he was not in a good mood. His 'adik angkat' met with an accident). For any reason, I supposed he was not to treat his student the way I was treated. It damaged his professionalism as a PROFESSOR in the university. There was only some slight mistakes that I did in which I didn't write PROFESSOR (instead I wrote ASSOC. PROFESSOR in the Bahasa Malaysia abstract I wrote for the thesis), the first page of the thesis has a roman number that needs to be deleted, I didn't indent a paragraph in one of the pages of the thesis). I told him that I could print at once what he wanted me to do earlier. Before this incident happened, he made a call stating the things I needed to do for the thesis. As I was in the hospital after my APK (versus LASIK) operation, my conversation with him was rather unclear. He didn't tell me that I needed to print the corrections and hand-in to him during my meeting with him that was scheduled just the day after I talked to him.
To shorten the story, after he bombarded me with his scarce words, he told me, "This is easy, I just sign here". In the first place, that was just the thing that he needed to do so. He didn't favour me ever since in the first semester of being supervised by him, I went through the process of getting scolded by him once in a while. Though that was the first time I was scolded by him face-to-face, I seldom was scolded on the phone. I could accept all that was happened to me because I know I was a student (adult one). Nevertheless, I believe that as a university professor, his attitudes was totally unprofessional. For me, you don't have to boost telling everyone that you're A PROFESSOR... instead, people will know that you are one because of your VALUES you show to others. So, professionals - especially supervisors - out there (and of course, I'm reminding myself) if you want to know whether you're really supervising your students, let the students judge you. Don't brag about what you're good at instead the good thing will speak for itself.
