So I am a master's degree student in math at a local university. I am very dissatisfied and surprised with the type of work that my adviser asked me to do. I am unsure if I have bad attitude towards work or what is happening is already inappropriate.
The task I was given is extremely routine; it was mind-numbing. It involves a LOT of symbolic manipulations that follows a few set of rules and I apply them repeatedly. To give you guys an idea of how much computation by hand, I have done; I have used more than 30 pages and I write really small (around 0.5cm height and 0.3cm width) with very few white spaces(less than 0.5cm) so this may take other peoples a 100 pages or even much much more. One can imagine the high likelihood of making a lot of computational error due to sheer size of the number of computations. I have checked my computations a few times already, and I am still finding errors here and there. I have asked my adviser, if we can use software to do this computations and he refused without giving any reason why other than being embarrassed(I did not ask why.). Obviously, we have to make sure my work is a 100% correct so we could conjecture correctly, but I have no idea how we'll manage to do this manually.
Hence, I am really finding it difficult to be not cynical about my adviser. I feel like it's a stalling strategy, but perhaps not?
edit
@Anyon, in response to "Can you at least check your pen and paper results using software or is he against that too?"
I have asked if I could allot time to study and use software on my own and he said we should do it near the end, but that means any errors may, of course, negate results; which I don't think makes any sense because it seems very inefficient. I don't understand how he plans to proceed without any computer checks. He also said that he'll check my computations, although he did not say if he'll do it by hand or by computer. He also mentioned that, he had use software during his dissertation and have now forgotten how to use it which means he can't help me with software.
update I have succeeded in getting my adviser to reveal his motives. Well, he has no motives. As everyone below who answered have guessed, my adviser, simply, does not want to use software because there are technicalities in the mathematics that he does not know how to implement correctly to the software, neither do I. Wolfgang Bangerth is correct, there was a serious breakdown in communication. I am happy this is settled. Thank you to everyone who've answered.