[implicit]

during our very productive and entertaining meeting today, my thesis supervisor gave me a copy of the reference letter he had contributed to my law school application.

it was so very generous. not that it contained anything embroidered or necessarily untrue, but in the sense that... it told me that he's been looking to see the best in me from the beginning. and, because he's a man of integrity, i know he would only write such lovely things if he believed them to be true. and i also know that the words he used are meaningful for him, rather than empty compliments. as an academic reference he was not called on to do this, but he went out of his way to highlight aspects of my character that he admired. "i trust her implicitly," he wrote.

this note was so moving and so timely: i'm preparing to submit my first complete draft at the end of the month, and there's a lot to do. by mid-april, i will have defended my thesis. a few weeks later, i'll graduate again. the work has been tedious, thrilling, heartbreaking, provocative, inspiring, infuriating, and edifying. but what i am most convinced of is that the work has been important, not by virtue of my brilliant treatment of untapped primary sources, but by virtue of the subject matter. the stakes of this work go far beyond the boundaries of the academic world.

so... it's nice to know that he trusts me.