Finishing My Degree

For those of you who don't know already, I am finishing my MA in History this semester. I started back in 1998, and I sort of dropped out—that's too strong a phrase. I stopped going in 2001 when I moved to Chicago. I have a pretty decent excuse: I thought I was finished at the end of that summer. Turns out that a series of misunderstandings, mostly my fault, meant that I was not in fact done. This semester, I figured it was about time for me to finish. I mean, it's just one class. How hard could that be?

Pretty goddamned hard. I'm finding it nearly impossible to get back into the grad student work ethic that got me through when I was a full-time student. You have to read a certain way, at a certain pace, to get through as much secondary material as you need to get through. I'm having a really hard time doing it.

In fact, I've been hiding from it. Instead of reading about movie censorship (my general topic), I watch movies obsessively. Way back in 2000, I started my movie review site because I was watching movies obsessively in an attempt to keep from thinking about my complete lack of direction. Here I am, three years later, with the same problem. When I think of sitting down with a book for some hard-core skimming, I panic. I find myself frantically looking for something, anything else to do. Like write an entry for my blog about my troubles.

I'll get it done though. I just need to find a focus. It will mean going to the library and slaving over a microfilm reader for hours on end, but I will find my topic. I have to—they already cashed my tuition check.