my entire graduate career seemed in jeopardy; the professor
I had come to Berkeley to study with was the director of the
project from which I had been fired. My sense of identity,
and my concept of the universe, crumbled around my feet
for the first, but not last, time. What had happened to niv
limitless self in a limitless world?
The culture I was raised in suggested an answer: I had not
worked hard enough at my job to keep it, let alone succeed.
I regret to report that there is some truth in that answer.
Another research assistant and I had made frequent,
disrespectful, and (apparently) audible jokes about the
project on which we were working. We goofed off so much
that our supervisor got bent out of shape, as perhaps did
some of the data we were punching into IBM counter-sorter
cards.
My associate and I had rationalized our behavior with the
juvenile notion that the project was a joke long before we
started making jokes about it. Today, thirty years later, my
inner adolescent-which is less wise but more tenacious than
the infamous "inner child"-still clings to the belief that we
may well have been right! Whatever merit this twisted
rationale may have, it is true that I did not work hard
enough to keep that job, and so I lost it.
LEARNING OUR LIMITS
But that truth does not go deep enough-not if I am to
discover the meaning of "way closing" behind me. I was
fired because that job had little or nothing to do with who I