Alison Pugh

tremendous kind of the quintessential connective labor.

So when I was in graduate school, I came upon, I thought of an idea for a dissertation that captured my interest in the conflict between work and family.

And that was a sociology of sleep.

And so I did some interviews and my advisors, including Arlie, were

extremely excited about it.

They saw it as original, unique, no one's talking about this.

And I can see now, like in retrospect, that they are right.

It was a kind of unconventional and good idea.

But I lost interest in it and I decided not to do it.

And instead, I embarked on a study of consumer culture and how much we spend on kids and how that varies by

class and race and the meaning of stuff to kids.

And it went fine.

But there was some disappointment, I think, among my advisors for something that was probably a little more conventional, a subject.

And at the same time, Arlie was not like, no, you can't do that.

She just kind of was trying to coax my song out of me.

And that's the PhD advisor's task.

And I felt...

Not only did she give me permission or, you know, not only was I able to do this, I just felt throughout, you know, our decades long relationship now, her capacity to read and reflect what I was giving off to her.

And that really is profoundly moving and also empowering on some level.

So yeah, it's a blessing to have someone like that in your life.