This is it

I told Matt the other day that I was going to just delete this blog, since clearly I have not been keeping up with it. Things have been quite busy around here, but not really in the exciting/fun category that I tended to write about here. Basically, we've both been working hard and there's not much to say about that really. But, in the hopes that something wonderful and fun will happen down the road, I guess I'll try to keep this blog alive for now with a short post because I am pretty much willing to do anything I can to distract myself from writing these days. My new 5 minute break treat is to look up a random hotel or inn in some beautiful town and imagine staying there someday. Thrilling!

I'm guessing anyone reading this knows, but the past 6 months or so have been really challenging, yet rewarding for me. I was required to apply for my current position to make it permanent and ended up interviewing for a position at another university as well. After about 4 months of waiting, interviewing, tears, and stress I now have a permanent position doing what I love. The catch was that I needed to be 'finished' with my dissertation by the time the position begins again in August. That pushed my timeline to finish up by a few months, but thanks to a great committee and husband who sanctioned my not working this summer, I have a plan for finishing this dissertation by the end of July and defending around the third week of August when the semester starts back. That will still put me at graduating in December as I have always planned. Right now, that means weekly deadlines and meetings with my advisor (again who is awesome to do this during the summer) to get chapters in and revised before it's a finished product ready to send to my whole committee.

People have been asking me, so in case you are interested, this is how it goes....
Dissertation will be 6 chapters....3 of these I 'technically' have from my proposal/prospectus I did last year- however since things have changed in my study quite a bit they have to be very heavily revised. The other 3 I am working on weekly. I have two just about finished, then I'll go through edits with those. I have to submit a 2nd version of all 6 chapters by the end of June....

Sometimes I have moments where I am excited and thinking "I'm doing this!" After almost 8 years of graduate work, I may actually be DONE at some point soon. Then, at other moments where I am stuck and feeling overwhelmed and reading something where I am using awful passive voice I doubt myself. So, in honor of trying to get back to that confident place here is a pic of me that I just found again the other day.