"Sorry," she says again, souring a little, but what are you gonna do. She looks, daunted, at his sprawl of math. "I, um. No one really told me what I'm - could you maybe walk me through what's going on here, or...?"

Ah yes, her favorite thing: asking male supervisors for help. She highly doubts he'll be at all decent about it, but, she needs to know what's going on somehow or other and there's no one else to ask.