I am breaking my moratorium already. Bad Harriet.

The weather for my trip to campus was spectacular. It�s November 2 in Chicago and I�m walking around in my shirt sleeves. In the quad a group of unkempt students was holding a questionable bake sale and barking out that they were giving discounts to women and minorities. I didn�t stick around to find out the logic behind the sale. There were Italian exams to translate! But first, a trip to the media center.

When I showed up in the media studies center I was met by the student worker who was helping me with my film clips. She immediately asked me about the film, my dissertation, etc. It wasn�t until I left that I wondered how she knew I was a student? Did I mention it? Or am I still, despite my ever-advancing age, wearing a student aura? I tried walking around campus feeling professorial. I�m not sure it�s working. I think I need the floppy velvet hat on my head and diploma in hand. I still feel like I�m playing dress-up. While I was waiting for her to run off copies of my DVDs, I decided to head over to take my exam.

It went well, thanks for asking. I was daunted at first, because the passage was about twice as long as any of the past exams that I�d tried at home for practice. But nevertheless, I was able to get the gist of it on the first pass. I took an hour to translate as much as I could without a dictionary and then spent the second hour getting as far as I could with the dictionary to help me to smooth out the prose. I got pretty far and I was surprised at how much I could understand without ever cracking open the giant book I�d schlepped all the way in on the train (Seriously, this is the biggest book I own by a long shot. Even my mammoth German dictionary has nothing on this one.). I feel like I did a better job than I did when I took the German exam and I passed that one, so I feel pretty good about this one. As an added bonus, I found out that I passed my transcription exam last week. This means the only thing standing between me and a dissertation defense date is Italian.

I dropped off recommendation forms to three of my letter writers and talked to two of them in person (the third, my advisor, was not around today) and neither of them laughed at me and both asked me where I was applying and passed over another opportunity to laugh when I told them. Apparently they think I can do this. That�s a good quality in a person who is writing recommendations for you.

I have to finish a draft of my conference paper by tomorrow and finish editing my chapter by the end of the weekend and then I have to get going on my cover letters. Holy cow. I may have to start thinking about my dream job.

And now I return to my cone of silence. If I can keep my mouth shut.

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