I wasn’t looking for a mentor when I first met Ronna Jevne. I was looking for a thesis supervisor, somebody who could get me through a process so I could come out of academia with a degree. In fact, I had already asked several potential supervisors. My rate of rejection was 100%.
The problem, at least on the surface, seemed to be my choice of thesis topic. I wanted to study humour. All the professors I approached denied any knowledge of the academic material relating to humour and therefore declined my request. It’s a cruel process, looking for a supervisor. Chalk it up to lack of preparation on my part, but I had never supposed that professors, once you had been admitted to the program, would cherish the right to refuse you. Even if I had imagined it, I would never have dreamed that they would not want to supervise a study of humour. Of all the potential topics I could pursue, it was far and away the one for me. I thought everyone would be equally fascinated.
By the time I got to Ronna, late in the game because she was just returning from a sabbatical, I was getting desperate. I’d never been good at sales, but it seemed that I either had to convince Ronna to supervise my thesis, or change my topic and restart the pleading process. Nothing could be taken for granted so I did a little research. The findings were inconclusive. My knowledge of Ronna was limited. I knew of her work from reading newspaper articles. I attended the event launching her book, the Voice of Hope. The student Rumour mill offered mixed reviews.
Gathering the shreds of my confidence, I made an appointment to meet at her office. It was clear at the outset that she hadn’t been sitting there idle, hoping a student would come by with a thesis idea. So I leapt into unfamiliar territory and put forth the theory that humour is related to hope. Not missing a beat she asked me how they were related. If I had an answer, I don’t know what it was. At that point I went into shock. My memory of the next few minutes has been distilled to a single point—she said she’d do it.
If this meeting had taken place a year earlier I would have greatly relieved Ronna by rejecting her. I would have said that I did not want to study with someone who was not completely enthusiastic about studying with me. After all, I was nearly forty, and I had left a good job to come into the Master’s program. But the very real possibility of being forced to abandon my dream of studying humour had humbled me. In return for her grudging agreement to take me on, I promised to make the process as painless as possible.
With a tentative foot in the door, I pursued my interest in humour, and later whole-heartedly joined Ronna’s quest to develop the finer strategies that could be employed in a search for hope. Many concrete ideas developed a reliable stability as we practiced using them. We now call them hope tools. One of the ideas, originally worded by Denise Larsen, was to ask people to recall a time when things were going their way, only they didn’t know it.
The day I met Ronna Jevne was definitely one of those times. If I had known the person behind the agreement, I would have been more hopeful. I never guessed that I had just gained the support of somebody who would stick with me through thick and thin, a teacher who would look beyond my faults with a curious gaze on my potential. I did not know that I had found someone who would call me up to ask if I needed encouragement, someone who would cover for me if I missed a deadline, compensate for my ineptitude at logical academic writing, nurture me when I was overwhelmed, stand boldly beside me when I made errors and ultimately turn me into a hope specialist. But I did not know her at all, so I thought I was making a compromise, forfeiting my ideals, settling, out of desperation, for something less than I had hoped to receive.
Hope tools help us search the past for experiences that might support our hope in times of uncertainty and pessimism. There are days when things look bleak. I rail against injustice. I predict the worst outcomes. When I am clear-headed enough to remember the hope tools in my kit, I take a moment to ask myself if there was ever a time when I was okay, only I didn’t know it. Searching my memory I find indisputable evidence of times when I was unknowingly okay, even more than okay. Then I have to open the door to the possibility that this bleak moment might be another of those times.
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