better left to chance?

i have not had a free minute to reply to any of the emails piling up in my inbox or to post anything on my blog. not sure exactly what i have been doing, well besides attending an english garden party, visiting chatsworth house and the peak district (stunning place, go there and pretend you are a member of the british aristocracy), running, playing football, and writing nearly 13 000 words of my dissertation... but i digress.

the idea that things happen for a reason has always been one i have struggled with and have not entirely believed, but today it seems that things over the past few months have happened for reasons that i am beginning to understand.

in march sometime i got in a tussle with a lecturer about his cancellation of my presentation and his refusal to respond to any emails and i ended up meeting with the head of the programme who said that although she couldn't do anything to rectify the situation at that time, she could assure me that he would not be assigned as my supervisor for my dissertation. as i was annoyed with the programme and the whole arena of academia, i quickly wrote a dissertation proposal that was to deal with canada-us relations in light of the 'global war on terror' and trade disputes.

in this proposal i briefly mentioned the word 'trade' although i am not too keen on studying trade relations and i was assigned to a supervisor who specialises in international political economy, which i think was a bit of a tactic of appeasement since i had to deal with that other jackass and because of that little word 'trade.'

i met with my supervisor and then had to go home unexpectedly, where i decided to change the entire topic of my dissertation back to what i was originally interested in, but which my supervisor was not an 'expert.' i read and i read and then i came back here and started working, spinning around the library like a tornado. i have since seen him a few times, the most recent time being today.

over coffee this morning he told me i should do a phd, he'd like me to do it here, and he would provide a reference for me (and as he has recently taken over as head of the department, this is sort of a big deal). now i suppose i have always thought that it was a faint possibility that i could do a phd, but i never really thought that other people would actually suggest i do it. and just like that, he told me not only does he think i can do it, but that i should do it and that the field of politics needs more female academics like me.

who knows if i actually will devote 3 years of my life to figuring out how to make foreign aid more effective (definitely not this year as i have other things in mind), but none of this would have happened had aforementioned jackass not spontaneously cancelled a presentation, sent me rude emails, and raised his voice enough to make me politely excuse myself to the hallway to cry!

fate? chance? luck? meant-to-be? i am just not sure.