2/3rds

I've written 63 pages in the last two weeks. I have at least 30 more pages to write this week. I really don't know what this exam is supposed to prove, since I doubt there will ever again be a period in my life when I need to write quite so much in such a small amount of time. It seems like the only point of this is the hurdle itself: prove that you have the tenacity to complete this assignment and we'll let you suffer through writing a dissertation for us.

While I've been holed up in my apartment, people have been going to Oktoberfests and football games and having actual weekends without me. I'm jealous, of course, and yet there are also moments when this is strangely soothing. Last night it was just after midnight and I was sitting in my home office finishing up last week's papers. My thoughts were flowing freely for once (the perfect combination of adrenaline and too-tired-to-waste-time-doubting-my-ideas), my fingers were clattering over the keyboard, I had classical music playing on Pandora,* I had a box of saltwater taffy on stand-by for when I ran out of steam on the typing. My boyfriend was in bed in the other room and, in addition to wanting to be in bed with him there were a dozen places I would rather have been at that moment. And yet at the same time there is nothing else I wanted to be doing more than what I was doing right then: reading, thinking, writing, putting the puzzle pieces of a theory together in a way that it clicked for me, even if it won't necessarily click in the same way for anyone else.

There are not a lot of moments in life when I am completely convinced that I've chosen the right career path, but throughout this process I've been reminded again and again that I am doing this because I want to do it, and that no matter what happens at my defense in a few weeks I am going to get over this arbitrary hurdle and finish this degree because right now I'm not supposed to be doing anything else.

Thank God for intrinsic motivation.

*I used to scoff at the idea that classical music was helpful for studying, and yet personal experience has proven to me that a surefire way to really understand heavy reading material is to turn off all other technological distractions and listen to streaming classical radio. The combination of theory+classical music just clicks in my brain. I don't mock those studies anymore.