Get This Man a Doctor

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I found her!

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Today I finally found my third recommender, who was also my thesis advisor. She was at my school for a two year professorship, and unfortunately did not get a tenure track position. She left, and hasn’t taught anywhere else since.

Now, finding her wouldn’t be so hard, except for the fact that I live in New York and she was rumored to live in Portland. For the past month, I have done the following things to get a hold of her:

1. Sent an email to the head of her old department,
2. Sent an email to three other professors in her old department,
3. Sent an email to her former dissertation advisor,
4. Sent an email to her old school email (bounced),
5. When all those failed, got her current address and sent her a letter priority mail (waited two weeks, then),
6. Sent an email to her husband (after deciding that I was willing to risk a restraining order for grad school),
7. Sent an email to the head of her husband’s former department (who was quite helpful, I might add), and finally,
8. Started panicking.

All of these things failed (except 8). Now, I do not need a recommendation from my advisor, but one of my former professors told me it would be a “liability” to not have one. Also, I had run out of professors who could say generally good things about me, and those that could say generally good things would also say some specifically bad things. Too risky.

I came to Portland for Thanksgiving, and also because my mom and stepdad are moving to Florida. This will probably be the last time I have a reason to be in Portland. So at the very least, I had to try going to her house (like I said, willing to risk a restraining order). Maybe they moved, maybe she didn’t want to talk to me, maybe they were on vacation. I don’t know, I just had to try.

After ringing the bell and getting no answer, I decided I would write their neighbor a little note asking that if they knew where the current or past resident was could they please drop me a line as soon as possible because I’m a little crazy and I’ll probably show up again tomorrow if they aren’t prompt about it.

When I saw her walking down the street, I let out the most awkward “Heeeeeyy….” ever. Mathematicians aren’t so much with the people skills, so our initial greetings had a lot of loooong. Syyyyyyllables.

But she invited me in, and we actually had a nice long chat about grad school and what she was up to. It was actually really good to talk to her, and I had forgot how generally kind she is. I’m kind of disappointed now that we didn’t keep in touch.

I didn’t really prod about why all my previous attempts to contact her failed, but she agreed to write a recommendation, which is so gloriously awesome that I’m going to pass out now.

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