Scratchpad

Impossible favors

11 Feb 2010

I am having a terrible time finding an advisor for my thesis. Not because it is a bad project (I certainly don't think so, at any rate), but mainly because of my own unwillingness to ask people for things. It was only through the goodwill of others that I never had to actually sleep on the street when I was homeless, and it was through the goodwill of others that I even ate in college. How the hell does one even pay those things back? And how can I bring myself to incur even more debt by asking someone to be my advisor? (And, believe me, taking on an advisee is a tremendous commitment, despite what more generous faculty will tell you about it being part of the job. That it is a commitment some faculty accept gladly and others accept grudgingly is a mark of their relative generosities, not a measure of how easy they perceive the undertaking.)

At any rate, asking for things. I can't blame anyone but myself for my lack of an advisor at this point, because in this stupid reluctance towards asking for things, I waited 'til the end to ask and everyone's already been snapped up—no one has any time left to give. So what might have been only a moderate debt for me to incur has now become all the greater.

I hate this.

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