What your Advisor Says:           What You Advisor Means:
    ----------------------            ----------------------

1.  Look on this as a learning        You're going to suffer.
    experience.

2.  Let me explain the format of      Let me make you even more nervous.
    the defense.

3.  I'm here to lend you support.     I'm here to destroy you so you won't
                                      look smarter than me.

4.  I found the overall concept       This is my token compliment before
    interesting.                      ripping your ideas to shred.

5.  I would like to have had more     I didn't read it.
    to study this [your work].

6.  I have some concerns about the    I hate the theory but I can't insult
    theory upon which your study is   the author so I'll insult your work
    based.                            instead.

7.  There are some aspects of the     I read it, but I just don't remember
    study I would like to hear more   anything about it.
    about.

8.  Your hypotheses are not strongly  You came up with an innovative idea
    enough linked to the existing     and I want to make sure you never do
    literature.                       it again.

9.  Your research is an interesting   Why didn't I think of this before
    extension of my own work.         you did ??

10. You have failed to take into      You failed to cite me.
    account some of the more relevant
    literature.

11. I would like you to explain.....  I don't know anything about this stuff
                                      so you'll have to explain it to me.

12. Your statistical results don't    I don't understand statistics.
    seem to support your hypotheses.

13. Your selection of statistical     I'm the only one here that understands
    tests is rather simplistic.       statistics and I wanted to rub it
in.

14. How did you ensure that you had   I had to come up with at least one
    drawn a random sample ?           question and this one always works.

15. Let's wrap this up.               I'm hungry.