DONE

Grades are in (I had to fail a student) and term papers are done (the worst work I've done in grad school so far). Approximately 90 weeks down, 222 to go. Please excuse me now while I go curl up with this bottle of cheap champagne and try to forget what a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad semester it's been.

Validate me, please

An hour past the deadline I set for myself, but still two hours and eight minutes ahead of the deadline my professor set, I have officially finished - and turned in! - a term paper.

Things I'm thinking about instead of literary history

• It's 65 degrees outside.
  
• There are little kids playing on the trampoline next to the flowering crabapple tree in my neighbor's yard, while he grills something that smells delicious, as his family sits around in the sunshine laughing and drinking lemonade.
  
• I am at my desk, looking out the window. No wonder so many grad students are depressed.
  
• I want a beer.
• Academe might not be anything more than putting big fancy words on stuff everybody already knows about (intertextuality = referencing, drawing inspiration from, or being influenced by other things you read), doing weird morphological things to common nouns to show their important theoretical status (othering), and using lots of French words.
  
• Tempted to insert some non-sequitur quotation from, say, Monty Python into this paper to see if it is actually being read. Will settle for something jargony from Derrida about the archive, I guess.
• Is it worth it to try to make macaroni salad without celery?
• How on earth is this ever going to turn into or lead to a career?
• It is difficult and awkward to give dating advice to my Turkish Muslim friends, and not just because my Turkish has become terrible this year.
  
• I think graduate school has had a negative impact on my writing.
  
• I should have gotten a haircut before finals. My split ends are much more interesting than this paper.
  
• I've reached the minimum page limit. I give in (up?). Getting that beer now.
  

On entering (what feels like) hour 173 of my finals marathon

Nope, not done with the semester yet. Working on it (obviously not very hard at the moment, but I was). I was so stressed/busy/worried about the M.A. exam that I think I used up my semester's allotment of self-discipline - I'm having a really hard time knuckling down and getting these papers done.
Possibly because of that, it was lovely to take a semi-break the last couple of days while Papa was in town. We had a nice birthday dinner with friends at our house, which I realized isn't that great for entertaining yet. Even with a leaf in the table, 5 people is a squeeze (still deciding what to do about that dining set - paint, refinish, or sell?). We do have 5 non-chipped dinner plates, but only 4 matching napkins. We also gave books to about 700 first-graders, bought some peonies and lavender and more tomatoes to plant in the yard, and went to a Twins game.
In other news, I hate literary history. Well, the idea of literary history. The only reason I'm lingering over my literary history paper is because there is a paper twice as long on semiotic theory that's waiting for my attention. Ok, working again.

Menards

Someone pointed out to me that they were having trouble with the Menards registry link, which is possibly due to the fact that they make everything really difficult there. Anyways, here's that list so far:

1 0 1-1/8" RECIPROCATING SAW RS7 241-9857
1 0 7 1/4" CIRCULAR SAW CS10 BOSCH 241-6586
1 0 14.4V DRILL /DRIVER COMPACT 1.5AH 241-6920
1 0 10" COMPOUND MITER SAW MASTERFORCE 240-0014
1 0 FREEZER, CHEST, 7.2CF,WHT EWCF7WBX 453-5399
1 0 6' FG STEP LADDER T1A 976 560-0860
1 0 24' FG EXT LADDER T2 4924 GREEN 560-0800
1 0 50 PINT ELECTRONIC DEHUM FDF50S1 623-4921

M.A.

Done and done.*

15 minutes before my exam, my substitute teacher hadn't shown up. I called him, and it had just slipped his mind. The exam itself was fine. I apparently misunderstand Roland Barthes, but I a) don't care and b) passed anyways. I was irritated to hear that I don't work closely enough with the literature in my thesis, because there hasn't been any literature taught in this department since 2007, but at least they didn't mention the part of my thesis where I accidentally ended a paragraph midsentence. They say an oral exam is the pinnacle of the work you've done leading up to it, and for whatever reason, I feel as dissatisfied with the exam as I do with the work I've done in grad school. This isn't my everyday perfectionism - I've reigned that in here, on the advice of many current and former grad students, although all it's gotten me is a tendency to turn in papers with typos. Maybe this is burnout?
In other news, I got a big fat summer grant, so I won't starve. I actually wanted a summer teaching position, but I realize this is more prestigious. I will count my blessings and work harder to not go stir crazy achieve healthier structure and balance in my life on my own than I did last summer (ten points if you find me a class on electrical wiring or carpentry that I can take). I was also awarded a fellowship for next year which involves some outreach stuff in area highschools.
I promise, I am excited about all this, even if it doesn't sound like it. Thing is, I'm also run down and facing the enormous mountain of work that piled up while I prepped for this exam and having doubts about the future of higher education. And it's been raining the last few days, reminding me about those repairs we need to make along with the repairs it would be really smart to make if we're going to mess around with repairs in the first place, and how that will cost more than I make in two years. Some people would say "le sigh" here, but now that I have a graduate degree in Germanic Studies, I feel obligated to say das Seufzen.
One more thing before I start unearthing my desk: Rob and I also registered at Menards. You can look at that registry here: http://www2.menards.com/giftregistry/internet/home.jsp
Unfortunately, you can't see pictures of what we want there, but if you're curious, you can take the name of the item and google it.

*Well, done except for finishing my courses for the semester and turning in some paperwork. Hopefully that will really be as easy as it sounds when I write it!

Completely and Utterly Shameless

Good News: We started our registry (we'll add to it as time permits). You can look at it here, you just have to enter my name: http://macys.weddingchannel.com
Bad News: The bridal industry is OUT OF CONTROL. Good lord, there are a lot of gaudy and ridiculous things that are "must-haves for today's bride!" Because a) wedding gifts are only for the bride (not the groom) and b) we really need a complete dinner service for 10, and some crystal champagne flutes with sterling silver tray and matching ice bucket, and some throw pillows hand-embroidered by the Queen herself, and a magical sunflower-shaped butter dish the size of a dinner plate, we just don't know it.
Good News/Bad News: Macy's tells you how many gifts to have in which price ranges depending on the size of your guest list, and we failed spectacularly at registering for things in the $150+ range.