Milestone Muy Grande

This past Monday I submitted my final M.A. paper for binding and publishing. It felt so good I can hardly describe it in words (it was something akin to that final piano note at the end of the Beatles' song "A Day in the Life").

I didn't think it would be that spectacular an event, but suddenly, around 1:00am on Monday morning I realized, as I shuffled home from the pub, that this document was not just a paper. It was the embodiment of two years of thinking, reading, writing, listening, speaking, field working, presenting, struggling, arguing, crying, digging, googling, conversing, and debating with myself and others. It truly was a cumulative work. Everything from classes to articles to heated discussion over falafel and long distance telephone calls was in there. I feel happy and proud of a paper for the first time. In five years, I can go back to it and see where I was intellectually at the time.

I remember sitting in Kolkata this summer scrawling out my future acknowledgements page in the little journalist's notebook I carry around with me everywhere. Even then it took up two pages. Now it would probably take up twenty. I felt robbed--Cuba Gooding Jr.-style--when the graduate school template allowed me barely a paragraph to acknowledge and thank everyone I needed to. I am working on a "real" acknowledgements page that I plan to post to my blog soon.

For now, I must attend to the loads of other stuff I've been putting off or neglecting all together. Starting with this talk I'm giving at Tufts University on Thursday. Phew.

It never ends...