Well, I just got back from my meeting. It was brief, but it went well, sort of. He loved the theroy part of my paper (which happened to be the part that I also liked the best). In fact, he was very complimentary. I feel good now. Especially since I have a massive amount of respect for this man and he's regarded as one of the major archaeological theorists currently working in the Near East. He really wants me to develop it further, but he thought my points were excellent and well stated and very insightful. I was tempted to offer to kiss him with tongue - but I'm married and the door to his office was open. :)

The problem with this being that my advisor thought that the theory part in my very first draft was stupid and pointless and told me to get rid of it. (I, um, accidentally included it in the draft I gave to my second reader.) Of course, three weeks ago, my advisor told me to put the theory back in - after I had left it alone for several months because he told me to and claimed that he had never told me to do that. I have a feeling that I'm going to to wind up writing three final drafts, taking them to my advisor and telling him to pick one.

This is very bizarre - as are most experiences related to graduate school and/or writing something that more than one person needs to approve. On the one hand I have a young advisor who wants to micromanage my paper to the point on insanity and who essentially makes me feel like a rather naive twit when I try to incorporate what I (and other people) consider to be important into a discussion. He also thinks I'm lazy. And one of my fellow graduate students and I have figured out that he confuses the two of us. We look nothing alike. She's interested in metallurgy and ancient technology and primarily the New Kingdom. I'm interested in the Predynastic and Old Kingdom and in injecting some more anthropological viewpoints into archaeology in Egypt. Yeah.
On the other hand I have an older professor who happens to be the director of the Institute and an extremely well-respected and established scholar who apparently thinks I'm great and makes an effort when possible (granted, I have to harrass him) to fit me into his extremely hectic schedule. He also would probably have no trouble picking me out of a police line-up after I bludgeon my advisor with the three anticipated drafts of my paper.

In any case, I thought I would share my bittersweet day with you all. Now I need to go work on translating medical texts for class tomorrow.