God that feels weird to say/type. I handed my dissertation in today, feeling like I just handed my child over. I'm far too emotionally attached to my work! After everything that's happened and all that I've been through these last few months it's strange to think that I'm all done. And considering that these last few last months have been the hardest of my life I'm bloody proud of that.
And provided that I pass (please God let me pass) I'm now a doctoral student. And I like the sound of that.
I'm attempting to cut nearly 500 words from my dissertation and Oh God, its making me feel like a bad mother. I just...I'm too invested in this and I genuinely don't think I can let any of it go. (Cutting 500 words still leaves me 500 over the limit but goddammit I refuse to lose anymore.)
I know, I know, Cry more emotionally-attached academic, but it just feels wrong!
England - you beautiful, wonderful bastards I couldn't be prouder of you.
God but it's a rare moment when you can feel so happy at being an English cricket fan!
I'm back in York, Which is good for three reasons - first off I get my internet back, second of all I'm near the library and as I have a month to finish my dissertation this is useful.
(For all those playing along at home I have 4000 words that I actually like and would be prepared to hand in. I need 20,000.)
The third reason? It's much, much easier to be in denial about my grandfather's death when I'm not faced with the glaring absence that he's left and my family's despair. Much easier.
This is why I go through the sheer agony of trying to write and be an academic. Becuase when it's good, when you have that moment when it all comes together? That's worth any amount of trouble.
I may have just figured out a way through this. And it's proof that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, because goddammit those three sheets of scribbled A4 look gorgeous to my eyes right now.
I'd like to point out that this isn't as harsh as it sounds because my dissertation hates me back. We've got a mutual loathing going on that doesn't bode well for the next chapter. Or even this chapter, come to think of it.
Yes, I screwed my essays up, but I can still get an MA and the expereince once again proved that I've the best friends you could ask for. And now, I've just been offered a PhD scholarship. They either don't know about my shit marks or they don't care and I'm not about to raise the issue.
I appreciate I'm going to spend the rest of my life explaining that I'm a Doctor of Ethical Philosophy and not medicine but I'm good with that. And yeah 100,000 words is an impossible task and if this year's anything to go by I'm going to spend the next three years of my life stressed as hell and crying. But, you know, I think it might be worth it.
Because Fandom!Secrets is going to take over my life. I can fully see this happening and have no desire to stop it because I just hurt myself laughing and that can only be a good thing.
However I don't normally start losing track of time like this till way closer to the deadline date. If this is what I'm like now with five weeks to go till submission date then God help the week before my essays are actually due.
Homophobia is wrong.
don't you think?
I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman.
I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights.
We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time.
I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room.
I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt me.
I am one of the lucky ones, I guess. I survived the attack that left me in a coma for three weeks, and in another year I will probably be able to walk again.
I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear.
We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.
I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me.
I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman.
I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman.
I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male.
I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men.
I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that.
I am the man who died when the paramedics stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual.
I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I did not have to always deal with society hating me.
I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don't believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind.
I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love.
I am the person who is afraid of telling his loving Christian parents he loves another male.
I am the person who got married to a man for five years because her mother would be too disappointed if she confirmed that she was a lesbian.
I am the man who feels uncomfortable with things like this as I hate the reminder that everything I am makes some people want to kill me because I need someone I love.
Re-post this if you believe homophobia is wrong. Please do your part to end it and you don't have to be gay to do this.
My friend and I have a tradition - every year on our birthday we find a song that mentions that age we've just become and that's our song for the year. My song for the last year of my life was Billy Bragg's 'A New England' - "I'm 22 now but I won't be for long".
This year's is Blink 182 "What's My Age Again?" because no-body like you when you're 23. However Frank Turner is, yet again, articulating what I'm feeling better then I can.
And louderwhispers?? It needs to go on the grad school anthems list!
One day I'm going to have a place of my own. I don't care whether it's a flat, a house, a room, I don't care where it is and I don't care whether I own it, rent or anything else.
All that matters is that, one day, I'll have my own place so I can put all my stuff in it and it can all just stay there. And I won't have to squeeze everything I own into cases every five months.
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