Yesterday was All Hallow's Eve, Halloween, and Samhain. Depending on your tradition, today or tomorrow is Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. A lot of traditions hold that at this time of year, the boundaries between worlds are blurred — in particular, that between the living and the dead, for traditions who believe in a world for the latter. There are wonderful myths explaining why this is so; I'm trying to write one into my attempt at National Novel Writing Month. But myths are for explaining the world so that we can better understand ourselves and the lives we live in it, and all the stories I'm thinking of for this time of year say the same thing: Honor the ones you have lost. So today I celebrated the memory of my late thesis advisor, who died last November, by going out and applying for a job I'm not really qualified for.
Professor K was firmly of the opinion that it is better to regret something you've done than an opportunity lost. She encouraged her students and everyone she knew to take risks in their academic and personal lives, and her own life was a never-ending string of examples for the rest of us to live by. She would apply for random research grants at the last minute, sending student assistants scrambling to help her put things together. When the linguistics department held a meeting to commemorate her, someone suggested a scholarship should be awarded in her name to the author of whatever project succeeded against the greatest odds, that best exemplified the spirit of "it worked, but it shouldn't have." Although perhaps inadvertently, Professor K's influence made my thesis such an undertaking.
With Professor K's help, I worked to adapt mathematical methods from evolutionary biology to problems in language change. She suggested readings in historical linguistics, her area of expertise, and then didn't bat an eye when I completely ignored them and said I wanted to gather data on languages by comparing their vowels — even though this went against the conventional wisdom of her field. She even encouraged me. Did she know I hadn't done most of the reading she assigned? Was she counting on the fact that I didn't know pretty much everything ever written about comparative historical linguistics dismissed vowels as invalid sources of data? I don't know, but when, despite all this, my programs returned the correct family tree for several Germanic languages and my control group, Spanish, she was delighted. "I wasn't sure it would work with the vowels," she told me, only at this point, when it was too late to go back and change my methods. Historical linguistic reconstruction is always based on consonants. It's widely believed that vowels change too quickly to give a useful picture of a language's evolution. But because I didn't know that I was bucking the trend, and Professor K didn't tell me, we confirmed her suspicions that the vowels are a source of useful information after all.
So it was in this spirit, of telling myself that what I didn't know (that I'm not qualified to manage a feminist bookstore, much as I want to work there) could be the very secret to my success, that I drank a cup of Celestial Seasonings Sugar Plum Spice tea before heading out to ask about a job at Mother Kali's Books. Professor K introduced me to Sugar Plum Spice at one of our research meetings, and I will always associate it with her. "They only sell it around the holidays," I remember her telling me, "so I have to stock up." I've been hoarding my box since last December, when I saw it in Trader Joe's and thought it would be a good thing to remember her by. Anyway, I had a cup of what I will probably always think of as Professor K tea for courage, and headed out.
I ended up having a half-hour chat with a really nice lady named Lorraine, who'd not only heard of my obscure little private technical college, but had considered going there as an undergraduate more than thirty years ago. She'd been a math major, too, and it turned out we share a lot of other interests besides. I explained that I've been trying to write, but would like a job to support my health insurance and hopefully cat habits, and that I'd been looking for volunteer work in the community, just to get out a little and stop from going stir-crazy while job hunting.
Lorraine seemed genuinely impressed by my resumé, even thought it contained no bookstore or even retail experience, and said that she would try to find a project for me, even if it was just volunteer work for the time being. It turns out Mother Kali's is reorganizing bigtime right now, and has been using temporary workers for awhile, but will probably be hiring some time in the next few months. I may have just gotten in on the ground floor, and all because I stifled my doubts and tried my best for something I really wanted. I like to think Professor K would have been proud.
— 1 November 2002