It's in the mail

This afternoon, I finally submitted for publication the first paper to come out of my thesis work. (I graduated in May, 2000.) It's a milestone (or millstone) of sorts, one that has been very heavy and not moved much until the last year or so. It turned out that I had to sit down with my advisor and walk him through the work, with him writing the paper bit by bit in a way made sense to him. What still puzzles me is why it came to that. It's not that hard, and he's a much smarter man than I am. Anyway, at least now he does understand it and thinks its good, interesting work, and he's happy to start writing the next paper, to be published in a different journal with a different audience. And we still get along. I do wonder, though, if he had been involved and supportive while I was actually working on it, whether I'd be a professor now, and whether I'd be happy about it.