A Masters-Prepared Student

So I'm sure judging on the fact that I am in fact still alive you have surmised that yes, I did indeed pass my thesis defense on Tuesday.  Thanks to everyone for all the supportive comments (even to those I accidentally deleted because I was trying to publish them on my phone while my hands were shaking).  The whole day is a little bit of a blur, what with the major stress, freaking out, and not eating thing.  A few times my hands were shaking so bad I couldn't even knit, though I did make good progress on the foot of the second Time of My Life sock while waiting five million hours for my defense to start.

Luckily for the documentation of the day, I did tweet quite a bit, so I'm going to post a few excerpts here in hopes that I can reconstruct it all.

6:03am - It's today. Today is here. #defense
8:07am - Got a parking spot in the free lot! #goodthings #cometothosefivehoursearly
8:16am - Sitting outside Dittos waiting for it to open. There's a dude snoring on the couch in front of me.
8:21am - There's a crowd gathering.  We're all subtly vying for places in line.
8:30am - I'm in! This is a competitive time of year.

It all spirals from there, getting more panicky and less informative, culminating in hallucinating seeing Sandy Cohen and a sudden need for a gin and tonic, despite the fact I have never in my life had either gin or tonic.

After I survived the defense (which I really do not remember, so don't ask.  I know it went well, I know I stayed calm, and most importantly I know my skirt was not wrinkled), I packed my weary self back into my car and drove the 2+ hours back to my apartment.  Where I pretty much passed out on account of that aforementioned no eating that had lasted the past three days.  Yesterday I had the day off work and so of course my body woke up on time and would not go back to sleep.  So rather than laze around the apartment and enjoy having no defense to work on I sat at my computer, finished correcting the few typos found in the text, and then scurried all over town to find a place that prints on 100% cotton paper (just go to FedEx business. Don't even try to find another place because they won't be able to help and are not nice about it).  End result?  Yesterday afternoon I was able to send this in the mail.

The past two years in 94 pages.  It is done and I am left with nothing to do before graduation next week.  I may have to create a self-assigned reading list to survive the transition from student to real grown-up.  Thankfully I have work to keep me busy, just not busy enough.