endings, beginnings and facing the void

i know, i know- i have been a horrible blog slacker. i can't believe my last post was about my birthday which feels like a decade ago. however, i have many good excuses for my non-updating practices: i finished my dissertation, i went to chicago, i wrote my last exam ever. all of that has been fairly stressful, fairly liberating but, now that it's finished, life feels weird somehow...

this master's degree and this two-year period of my life has forced a lot of thinking. on the one hand, it's been a painful period of coming to terms with my own capabilities. my masters proved to me that i've been given a lot very easily without necessarily working as hard for it as i should. however, i've also learned that i have a lot of scars from some of the crap i've had to deal with privately and that most people don't know or care about. however, on the other hand it's been a two-year period of self-discovery and of amazing hope for where my life is headed. i learnt that i am capable of working very hard. i've learnt that i'm capable of citing my own faults and working on them. i've learnt that some of my 'rock-solid' positions are more maleable than i imagined.

this two years has been really amazing and tough. i've truly come to understand how flawed i am but also how much hope i have for what i can become. rather than being a depressing experience (which it has been at times), i feel now like it's liberating and also promising...

this summer will be a lot of floating around and also beginning to seriously take a crack at my d. phil. the itinerary looks something like this:

june 29 - july 25th: deaning an international baccalaureate course at harvard/mit in boston. also doing a bit of lit. review.

july 25- july 30th: preparing for my parents

july 31st - aug 15th: hanging out with my parents. the plan: oxford, london, berlin, edinburgh, stirling, north scotland, oxford.

august 16 - sept. 26th: canada for research. 2 weeks in winnipeg and the rest in toronto (yet to be determined).

anyway, i'll post again soon... hope to see some of you soon and look forward to hearing what you've been up to

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