Adrift.

Well, it is done.  The dissertation is completed--revised, formatted, and fully signed off on.  I've been eagerly awaiting this day (it's been a week or two, actually, since all was completed) for quite some time.  I imagined I would feel an overwhelming sense of relief...and I suppose I did...though it was exhaustion catching up with me more than anything else :)

Finishing this Ph.D. has been rather anti-climactic.  At Berkeley, there is no dissertation defense.  Your committee members sign off on a sheet of paper....and then you're done.

It's more than a little odd to have a seven year graduate school career end with a few signatures.

I finished my job at the teaching center last week and now find myself with a lot of time on my hands.  For the past four years, free time such as this would have been used to dissertate.  Now that there is no more dissertation, I find myself a bit adrift.  I don't know what to do.  So...I've cleaned closets, and dressers, and pantries.  I've begun sketching out plans for next year's classes (though I can't do too much of this until my teaching schedule is 100% finalized and I attend teacher training at the end of the month).  I've made my own laundry detergent.  Gone through all of my academic books and sold all the ones I didn't enjoy reading the first time around.  I've read a couple of books.  I did take a full day off and go to the spa (something I promised myself I would do post-diss)...it was fantastic.  Thankfully, we're headed off to Baltimore on Friday (J is doing a week of PT at Johns Hopkins and getting his annual check-up with the SCI doctors...and we'll be celebrating three years since the accident).  

Anyways, if any of you have more time on your hands than you know what to do with (or are looking for ways to procrastinate)....here's the link to my dissertation: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9ODolx5K6jpUDF1Q1d2UWJuc1E/edit?usp=sharing

It's about theatres, civil society, and Calvinists in 18th-century Edinburgh and Geneva.  I'm actually pretty happy with how it turned out.

I'm leaving you with a few more photos from graduation.  Enjoy!