My supervisor

I ran into my supervisor today. As he was entering the University Library and I was leaving it, he stopped and teased me - "I didn't know sociologists went to the library!" (As a book historian and the lead editor of Darwin's letters, he spends a lot of time in the library, and - it's true - way more than I do!)
I suddenly felt very grateful for being his student. I have often felt that way - almost every time we have a meeting, really - but lately a lot of my friends have been complaining about their supervisors, for being distant, harsh, not "getting" the student's ideas, etc. How did I get so lucky? Let me count the ways that my supervisor could be terrible but is instead, somehow, amazing...

1.  My supervisor is not in my field. He told me with a smile after my first six months as a PhD student that I now knew more about sociology of science than he did. Usually that's a crash course for disaster, but for us it worked, in part because it meant he had to listen. He usually couldn't suggest readings for me, but he could ask intelligent questions about my ideas and be a fabulous editor of my writing.

2.  My supervisor doesn't answer email. Ever. He is a professor and runs the Darwin Correspondence Project - two full-time jobs, really - and he was also Head of Department for 2010-2011. That means he is impossible to track down, electronically or otherwise. He actually has a reputation in the department for "feigning incompetence", as our all-powerful administrator put it, with regards to email and other technologies, so that he is never assigned to do administrative work. Brilliant move by him, but how is all this not a train wreck of a supervisory situation for me?
Because when you do manage to arrange a meeting with him, you have his 100% full-on attention. He sometimes hasn't read the stuff you emailed him to read and so he'll send you away for a few minutes while he reads it (in about a page per second, it seems), and when you come back to his office he is guaranteed to be full of insightful comments. Magic. Also, another benefit of having an e-distant supervisor is that we are not friends. We don't share info about our personal lives. I don't send him the upset and ranting emails that some PhD students send their supervisors, because I know he won't respond and he most likely won't read them anyway. He doesn't have time to chat. And honestly, I think it's better emotionally and professionally for me (and maybe all of us) to NOT voice my occasional rants to my supervisor...

3. My supervisor is super famous and successful and goes on TV fairly often to talk about his work. (Which maybe explains #2... too much fan mail!) Isn't he therefore a jerk?
Absolutely not. Never. He is the nicest person you can imagine - full of the homegrown friendliness of his Wisconsin roots. He smiles all the time, which should be off-putting but he makes it charming (perhaps so that you'll forget that he's ignored all your desperate emails?). As I said, he gives you all his attention during meetings. No chat, but also no complaining (or maybe minimal complaining) about his own workload, which happens often to other students I know. He cracks jokes and uses outrageous metaphors while verbally ripping apart your crappy chapter, to keep you smiling and in a favorable mood despite the (almost always well-deserved) criticism.

So how did I get so lucky? And it's not just me, of course. He has shared his wisdom through kind teaching with countless PhD students, though his style seems to work best with those who are self-motivated, don't rely on him to listen to their rants or reply to emails, and have a sense of humor.

Other crucial reasons that my supervisor is awesome? He is cross-eyed, sleeps during seminars, and picks his fingernails til they're bloody - JUST LIKE ME.