aww, girl...

aww girl, you know you're the ONLY one I wanna spend my fall break with. . .

the thesis project.

notorious.

I've been trying to take a picture of myself every day that I work on my thesis (which is, you know, basically every day). By May, I'm hoping to have a collection of potentially hilarious/pitiful photographs of myself during this journey to Hell and back my foray into publishable thesis-dom. My goal is to document myself exactly as I am that day; unkempt or put together, hair a mess or completely done up, in various locations both on campus and off. So far, I've gotten some really good photographs. . . my favorite is the one above. Look how excited I am! So bright eyed and well-rested! Delighted to plunge book first into the whole damn thing! Wired on a four hour coffee binge!

While the process of writing a thesis isn't exactly the Hellstorm I thought it would be, it's not a cakewalk either. I've logged more hours at the school library than I care to count and the reference desk librarian knows me by name. The familiar buzz of the fluorescent lights on the library's top floor are as good as silence to me now. And I can't get through a morning without a Nalgene full of coffee (don't judge me, it's BPA-free and the only way I can smuggle my liquid gold into the library). I am so grateful for my amazing friends and boyfriend J, who've listened to me drop phrases like 'felt-sense of engenderment' and 'corporeal confines of one's physicality' into conversations about, you know, normal-life stuff. I've plotted out a page in the preface of my thesis -- "Special Thanks to Folks who Provided Unconditional Emotional Support" -- for everyone who's gotten my mind off school, had a beer with me after a long day of research on Freudian sense-of-self or actually listened to what my thesis is concerned with. Ya'll are great. Really and truly.

where I've been.

So.

I suppose I owe you an explanation, don't I?

  

This summer was wonderfully busy, as you can probably tell by my lack of updates. And this fall? It's proving to be even busier than July and August were. I finally started on my thesis (shaping up to be concerned with tomboys, gender neutrality and coming-of-age tales in the American South), settled back into my sunny apartment in my little college town and even got a roommate -- she cooks, she cleans and she makes me laugh when I'm on the verge of tears from all of the reading and writing and analyzing I've done for my thesis.

I guess I should also mention that I PASSED that damn test. I PASSED! REALLY AND TRULY! I only had to analyze Einstein's 'fabric of time' theory in French for two hours and then translate what I'd learned into English without my brain oozing out of my ears or exploding out of my eyes. Grad school is, apparently, VERY SERIOUS BUSINESS. If all goes well with the fracking huge chunk of thesis I'm writing this fall and editing in the spring, I should graduate in May with most of my sanity intact. Unless, you know, the University suddenly realizes I need to pass a doctorate-level calculus course.

Fingers crossed, okay? I'm going to go ahead and cross my toes on this one, too. Just to be safe.