A disheartening pause

As my idol Dorothy Parker might snipe:

"It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard."

That's a little harsh, but I'm incredibly frustrated today. I found out that my master's thesis advisor, a professor I truly admired and trusted to help me with this undertaking, told me today that he's leaving Northwestern. And in one sentence, one quick blight of Courier New, I was thwarted back to square one.

Mind you, he told me this after months of not responding to my emails. Perhaps I should've been suspicious, but I wasn't. I picked this professor, a genius in health policy, for the same reason I tend to pick all my heroes: I see something of myself in them. In this case, his delightful brain would wander as mine does, and he was sometimes flighty and hard to reach. As I am.

I'm not entirely the victim here: I confess that I've been finished with my master's courses (straight A's! Even in Finance & Budgeting!) for months now, and I've been just sitting on my thesis idea, procrastinating for no good reason, unless you count working two jobs and getting caught up in wedding planning. Which I honestly don't.

But the irony is perfect: I had finally gotten that wind of inspiration, finally written that abstract and started forming my research questions. They weren't too shabby, I thought:

• How does the HPV vaccination narrative fit into the landscape of US vaccination policy?
• How is HPV different from other diseases for which vaccines are recommended?
• Who are the stakeholders in HPV prevention policy?

So this weekend I read and reviewed and concentrated, and today I submitted it to my advisor -- the gatekeeper whose approval means I can move on to the next step, write the sucker and be done with it! His response was characteristically nice, but devastating.

It's not the end of the world; I'll need to find a new advisor. Maybe I'll need to change my proposal. In the end, it's up to me.