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Unfortunately my Ph.D. supervisor died before I was able to tell him how profoundly his views and criticisms impacted my intellectual life. He was one of those
by jonathanstrange 7y ago
Unfortunately my Ph.D. supervisor died before I was able to tell him how profoundly his views and criticisms impacted my intellectual life. He was one of those hypercritical people for whom "it's okay" meant more or less the highest praise, both for himself and others. This made him a number of enemies, I believe, and for me, as a Ph.D. student, that attitude could be kind of demotivating at times. However, in retrospective I realized that many of his snippy remarks were spot on. For example, he once said on a rainy day in front of the blackboard: "So it seems to me that linguistics is very much like economics, not really a science, or at least fairly imprecise." Something along these lines. Then, I got really angry. Now I think he was right.
Anyway, I told his family after he died and I think they appreciated it.
Bottomline of this little anecdote is that if you want to tell someone how grateful you are, don't wait until you can meet in person and just write a nice email, like the OP suggests.
- acollins1331 7y agoIt seems fairly obvious that linguistics is a very imprecise science, what field were you in that that statement offended you?... Was it linguistics?
- 52-6F-62 7y agoI think you’ve summed up the sentiment of the entire thread in two words: don't wait
- pikwip 7y agoI'm one of the ones who's been waiting, mostly because I want more to show for it when I do contact them. Being in the middle of a career switch kind of looks like "my life is stalled" until you pull it off, and I don't want the other person to feel obligated to encourage me.
- frandroid 7y agoMy father was a rather quiet person who was nice, known as a honest and hard worker, and was appreciated by many. When he took his own life, over a thousand people came to the funeral mass. We shook everyone's hand; each and every person was very sad and upset by his unexpected passing. If he had known how many people thought so fondly of him, I think he might have decided to go on living.