Literary Indulgence

I turned in a draft of my thesis proposal. (HOORAY!)

To make a December graduation (and therefore not have to petition loosing coursework credit), I need defend both my prospectus and thesis this Fall semester. Which means having the whole thing basically written by the end of this month. I've been working my tail off, and have now turned my second draft in to my adviser.

I haven't really loved the experience of writing a thesis (no, seriously? I'm four years older than when I started the thing, if that's an indication of my enthusiasm), and I don't know that I've ever had to really edit a paper before. (My usual method is to scrawl out a solid outline, hack out a pretty decent first draft, and then if I have time, read it over once to make sure it makes sense before printing it off and accepting my 94%A. Hey, an A is an A--and you think people really read what you turn in anyhow?)

But this behemoth of a paper is different, and I actually have been culling through the paper and changing things. Rewording sentences, moving ideas around, and even (cringe) deleting whole paragraphs. (That part is tough--so I have a document where I put the extracted paragraphs, called Thesis Stuff I Can't Just Delete. I'll delete the whole document later, but now the pain is too fresh.)

So anyhow, now that I have a bit of a break--before my adviser returns my draft--I've been checking something of my bucket list:


I'm really enjoying it so far. It's laced with so much silly emotion, unrequited affection, triviality, and... estrogen? It's a nice escape during naptime and in the evening. But between the descriptions of arrogant gentlemen, pretty-eyed sisters, impertinent behavior, and confusing family/social ties, the story line was becoming a bit muddled.

Then I came across this gem:

Illuminating.

Wikipedia, how did I ever used to get through a day without you?