No rest for the weary.
I will be spending the weekend preparing for my dissertation defense. (Four days and counting . . .) I'll be teaching most of the day Monday, so I can't do it then. I teach again Tuesday morning, so that's out. It's now or never. I'm not really worried, but I want to be prepared. It's important to me to do a good job.
I've decided to go down to Oxford on Tuesday afternoon. My defense is scheduled for Wednesday at 1:30, and I really did not want to have the added stress of worrying about getting caught up in traffic or having a flat tire and ending up late. And I thought a nice calm morning to relax (and pray, and pray, and pray . . .) would be better preparation than a three-and-a-half-hour drive.
A funny thing happened yesterday. I had not even looked at my dissertation in probably at least three weeks, so I sat down to read it through. This is the longest time I've had away from it since I began writing the dissertation, and I had the strangest reaction. It was almost as if I were reading it for the first time. It was something strangely distinct and separate from myself. It was hard to believe that I actually wrote it, that those were my ideas and my thought processes, my arguments.
I hope that muse comes back for a visit on Wednesday.
2 comments:
Needless to say, I hope it's a coronation and not an interrogation.
You'll get it done. I'll be thinking about you.
I enjoy the sensation of detachment from your own writing. I feel that if you can create something interesting enough to capture the interest of even yourself, you have defeated your worst of critics.
The HS counselors are thinking of you as well.
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