Immutable Laws

Grad students do not subsist on positive reinforcement. This isn't to say that we don't want it, it's just that it we get it so rarely that we don't know what to do with it.

Fortunately, I am not in such a situation and can devote my mental facilities to unraveling the secrets of the universe.

We can, however attempt to read too much into the actions of others and thus divine some precious few backhanded compliments.

For example, one of the eternal, unchanging laws of grad school is that anything you give your advisor will be changed. I can only hope, however, that the fact that my advisor was content to change the title of my talk, swap two slides, and adjust the font size of my slide titles means that I did not commit any gross violations of the laws of physics, mathematics, or good taste.

You take what you can scrounge.