Inevitable discovery is a term I learned from watching too much Law & Order. Although the concept has a specific definition in legal circles, there’s an underlying idea that I guess could be analogous to the notion of fate.
If a set of circumstances would have prevented an outcome from happening, could it still eventually happen through the normal course of events?
Today, I am a web developer at a technology company. I became a web developer because I saw limited opportunities at my former newspaper job. I ended up at the paper because of an internship program to which I was accepted after college. I applied for the internship because I was confident my experience with the college daily paper prepared me. I worked at the paper because I was encouraged to pursue journalism as a course of study. I studied journalism because a number of people saw I had a talent for it.
One of those people was Robin J. Gould. She taught the first journalism course I took in college. She served as adviser for the student newspaper during the two years I was working as desk editor. She was, in short, my rabbi. (Another term I learned from Law & Order.) We lived through a lot of bullshit bureaucratic drama, thus developing a kinship based as much on survival as common interest.
She passed away in the last few weeks.
