Do any of you ever get the feeling that sometimes the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing? Specifically your supervisor and your external?

I was given instructions by my supervisor to prepare an update for the external. He told me to keep the update very general (i.e. what areas I've been researching, what information I've uncovered, different ways the research could be naturally progressing etc.). I did all of this, submitted it to him (and he said it was excellent!).

Then a few days later I get a lengthy email from the external saying that this wasn't what she was looking for at all, it was too vague and generic, she wanted specifics etc.

Basically I felt by the tone that she thinks I'm an idiot!

I'm rather annoyed that I wasted a lot of time I could have used more productively had the correct instructions been given to me in the first place! Any of you had similar experiences?

First of all, I don’t understand why you should keep your external examiner update. Is this common practice? As far as I know, you can meet your potential examiner in conferences but other than that you don’t have to communicate regularly with him/her.

Anyway, why don’t you discuss it with your supervisor? It seems to me that he is the one who misunderstood your examiner’s requirements.

No, it wasn't anything official, it was just intended to be an informal update on my progress. I'm not going to bother saying anything to the supervisor about it since I don't feel there's much point rocking the boat unnecessarily, it won't affect anything long-term anyway, it was just rather irritating to discover I'd pretty much wasted my time.

you cannot blame your boss too caprice. when you become the big guy, you can also change your mind frequently.

It sounds like the external's problem. People can agree strongly in academia. My advisor thought I should drop 2/3 of my work for my thesis, my supervisor disagreed. I have included it.
I'm unsure about the system for sending reports to an external (external examiner, advisor?) Not sure what you mean there.

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