Summer fun

Okay, so I’m a bit slow.  I’ve never felt slow before in my life, but grad school has a way of making even the most confident students feel pretty darn close to stupid.  In my case, I realized I’m slow about networking.  Rather than sign up for conferences, submit paper proposals, and participate in other shoulder-rubbing opportunities, I am much more likely to shrug and stay home with my books.  But as I prepare for my qualifying exams, desire for a bit of procrastination sent me online to look up conferences in my areas of specialty.  I’m all for procrastination; it just needs to be the right kind of procrastination.

In this case, my procrastination led me to sign up for the annual Faulkner conference, held in Mississippi in July (I know, I know, I’ll either freeze in air conditioning or melt).  My advisor even wrote me a recommendation that got me a fee waiver for the conference, so that I just have to worry about getting there and paying the fairly small fee for staying in the dorms during the conference.  After I finish my exams, I have an idea I’ll need a break from studying–but then also something pretty fantastic to get me diving back into my books as I begin the dissertation.  Seeing people at the conference whose books I’ve just read should be a good way of making that happen.  Besides, I’ve never been to the real South, and I am delighted at the thought of getting even a peek at the subject of so much of my reading.  Mom might even join me and make a bit of a vacation out of my trek to Mississippi.  So I’ll hold onto that happy thought as I try to push through the last week-and-a-half before my exam (and as I write yet another essay before then . . . ).

Erin