Phinishing

On Oct. 19 I submitted a complete and final version of my dissertation to my Univ. Of course, since then I've been notified that I made a mistake on the title page and need to resubmit that... but the point is that I have finished my PhD and will have my degree conferred in December. I'm finally done with grad school. I can stop calling myself a grad student (and start calling myself an unemployed PhD!). It's a huge relief and I'm proud of the work.

At final count, I clocked in at 225 pages of text, 262 total pages, 4 chapters (plus intro and conclusion) and 96 figures.

I have to say, I have never missed my home Uni so much as I do now. It's hard to celebrate when the people who went through it with you are so far away (and when you can't drink. damnit). I also want to make a quick shout out to the Goat, Frankie B's biggest fan, my nun-loving-former-office-mate, my former-student-now-in-the-UK, and a whole host of others who helped read drafts and listen to me whine over the years. This wouldn't have been possible without you - and please send me your work so I can return the favors. For any slugs reading, we'll have to do a modified celebration in the spring when I come for graduation w/ the fam in tow.

In addition to the PhD-finishing, I finished my job applications. Now I'm in the waiting period before interviews are announced sometime in late November. I've had a couple of google pings via Academia.edu, which means people are googling me. But for the most part, I'm much less obsessed with this job cycle than the last. Of course, now I need to put together teaching portfolios, but I'll start working on that at the end of the week. I need to at least draft syllabi for the classes I've have claimed I'm ready to teach (History of Print and the Book, Crime and Punishment, etc).

I've also been finishing up a lot of craft projects. I'm about 95% done on the nursery. In order to keep the baby talk to a minimum, I'll have one big baby-craft wrap up post in the near future. But most recently I put the finishing touches on a quilt.

Oona approves this quilt sandwich.

The finished version.

I'll take better pics for the upcoming post, but here is is for now. It's Elisabeth Fransson's New Wave - a deceptively easy quilt to make. I used large stipling for the actual quilting. Though I love sewing, I'm definitely a better knitter than I am a quilter. The binding is wonky (too big and a bit wavy), and I'm still getting the hang of free motion quilting (probably b/c I do it so infrequently. But I'm really proud of the clean and modern look of this quilt and the way it highlights the fabric.

For those keeping track, I have 24 days until my due date. I'm a PhD, I'm on the job market, and I'm almost done with this pregnancy - this having-a-baby-shit is getting real.