Closure

Whoa. Having printed off my last two papers at 8:30 this morning, I have finished another semester.

This has been a trying term, with the convergence of several particularly taxing classes. I didn't help matters much by deciding, after two months of researching the fairly straightforward methodology of foodways and subsistence studies and only ten days before the deadline, to switch my research focus (in History of Archaeological Thought) to the much more baroque and contested field of feminist epistemology in gender archaeology. Phew.

I owe several debts of gratitude

to Elli, who was crucial to the dialectic of determining my approach to the subject, who has offered unflagging support and cheering in the face of massive boredom, and who has endured countless updates on my progress,

to Dr. H., who accepted on faith the last-minute swerve in my research, and who perhaps knew (as I did not) how much of myself I would identify in the process;

to C., whom I've been helping out during her busiest season and who told me to take the week off and come back when I was done with my papers;

to interlibrary loan, who took up my offer to make them cookies in exchange for hastening the transfer of a watershed article;

to anyone who has actually read this far, for letting me release my hazardously elevated levels of blah blah blah.

I mustn't rest on my laurels just yet; although I have printed everything out and packed my bookbag, I still need to get to the campus and turn in the darn things before the deadline.