Wrapping Up and Moving Out

In a few hours, I will have finished my very last final exam in literature...ever. Woo-hoo!! I'm so excited. I only have one more final exam next Wednesday (in Applied Spanish Linguistics for Second Language Acquisition), which shouldn't be too bad. I'm SO happy to be done. I'm sick to death of linguistics, Spanish lit. and literary criticism. I miss history...and facts... and objectivism...and reality. I guess I'm a bit too realistic to exist permanently in the literary realm. I need to get out before I start to hate to read, which would be an absolute shame.

I defend my thesis this Friday afternoon and I'm extremely nervous. Two of my committee members are totally laid-back, whatever kinda people but, my chair is really hard-line. All of the cross-exs with her will be in Spanish and she has pretty high expectations of me. My thesis is a big mixture of Latin American culture, history and political science (to accomodate the areas of interest of each of my committee members). The title is, "NGOs as Agents of Historical Change: A Comparative Study of Violence against Women in Argentina and Brazil". I know, I know, it's a mouthfull. I didn't want it to be so long and pretentious but, it just somehow morphed into that. I was really jazzed about it at first, then the newness wore off (especially when I had a hell of a time doing research in Brazil) so, by the time I got back I almost hated it. I've been struggling with this love-hate relationship I have toward my thesis; now that it's almost done, it feels like an old friend that I have to say goodbye to. I'm very excited to start my Ph.D. I feel like the world is opening up to me...finally.

I'll be traveling to Nashville in the next 2 weeks to try and find an apartment (at a reasonable distance/price). I'll be living alone for the very first time, which is the way I want it. I've dealt with way too many crazy, weird, lazy, dead-beat roommates. I'm ready for a break; I want to be alone, enjoy the peace and get to know myself a little bit. I just don't know what I'm going to do with all the crap in my current apartment....I'm certainly not hefting it to TN...any takers???