The Snowball Effect

Ever see the cartoon where someone drops a small pebble or stone at the top of a hill covered in snow and you watch it roll down gaining in size and destructive power? The same can happen with a seemingly simple email.

Once my committee members accepted, I sent an email to each of them thanking them for agreeing to be on my committee and included the introduction to my proposal and my proposed reading list asking if they wanted to meet to discuss them.  One member said he would prefer to meet to discuss one of my algorithms. Very understandable since it deals with his area of research. He didn't have time to meet till after the end of the semester and life got hectic as it tends to do. When I ran into him a little while later, he repeated his desire to meet regarding the algorithm and wanted two of his students to join in. Also understandable. When I emailed him with some possible dates, he asked for me to give a seminar regarding the material.

At this point, a member of my dissertation group was laughing predicting that this meeting would evolve into a full conference with me as the keynote speaker. I did not see the humor in his prediction. It didn't help that it came true.

As my comps are not till August, my advisor and I decided to squeeze in another conference paper. We developed a small tweak to the SMRGOL algorithm that would hopefully make it faster and off we went. Deciding to include the before mentioned committee member, I sent him an email asking to meet with us to discuss the paper which was due in a few days. After deciding on a time, he sent out a meeting request and I noticed that he included two of his students. This was good since we wanted their help in fixing some problems and limitations we had with the data.

I had to cancel this first meeting because of a work conflict. After deciding on a new time, the professor sent out a new meeting request. The number of invites seemed to increase so that there were now seven of us involved in this meeting about the paper. I later noticed that one member, is not a student, but part of the FAA and that the title of the request he sent now says Farley Seminar. What happened to the meeting about the paper that is due at the end of the week?

UPDATE: The first 1.5 hours were spent on the work my advisor and I had done. The last 20 minutes about the paper. Somehow, my awesome advisor and I managed to make the deadline. Now we just have to wait to hear if our paper is accepted.