For those that ain't clued in on this thing, almost half of my course this year is my Final Year Project (FYP). It's kinda like a thesis/dissertation in American universities, but we *have* to do one in order to get any kind of degree and it is always a very big project. Half a year's worth of work. And for this project, I need a supervisor.

I'd originally hoped to get Mathematics Lecturer Dr. X as project tutor. One of his key fields is cryptography, and my project is creating a software package akin to Ordo (go read the Cryptonomicon, you uneducated swine!), which won't just encrypt and decrypt but would do streaming decrypts. Fair enough. I mentioned it to X at the beginning of last week and he said he would look it over "tomorrow". Two weeks later he still hasn't looked at it.

Yesterday, I got a mail from Random Lecturer I Hadn't Heard Of A. A thought my project looked interesting and would I drop in for a chat if I still hadn't a FYP tutor. Bear in mind if I don't have a tutor by the end of this week, I'm badly behind. So, I figure I'll go see A today, before my AI lectures, and have a word with Dr. X whilst I'm at it. No worries. Then this morning I get an e-mail from Mathematics Lecturer Y, basically saying "I've set myself as your FYP tutor because if I didn't then soon you'd have automatically been given one. If you had already arranged with anyone else, let me know so we can change it back."

So I'm stuck in the middle. Dr. X, who I know I can work with better than 90% of the lecturers here probably still hasn't looked at my project. Y likes my idea but signed me up simply because I'm taking one of his classes. And A is a complete and total wildcard, one I would prefer to have nothing to do with. I'd rather be doing my math-geek project under the auspices of a mathematics lecturer, thank you very much. I have an hour at the university this afternoon. If reports go on the national news of a student killing three lecturers with his bare hands and a bent paperclip, you'll know that the stress got to me.