It occurred to me back in September that I have to take five more classes. Ever. And I’m taking two of them now. I always thought I’d be sad at this juncture. I’ve loved taking classes for about as long as I’ve been taking them, which has been entirely too long now.

Instead, I’m itching to be done. This bugs me, because both of my seminars this semester are a lot of fun. The Classical Rhetoric seminar is incredibly thorough, including minor attic orators, and I feel like I’ve finally got my chance to really survey these texts. Cultural Studies & Tech Comm is fun in other ways, principally because of de Certeau.

I want to be in the moment with these courses, and enjoy them for what they are. Instead, I’m irritated at being told what to read. I feel like I’ve finally got the beginnings of a reasonable handle on the research I want to be doing, and the stuff I need to be reading for that, and the time I need to be spending on related things. I want to be turned loose to work on this project.

When I was tiny, I hated birthdays because I didn’t want to be older. That changed, as things do when one starts to hit milestones. When I was 14 I wanted to be 16 so I could drive. When I was 19, I wanted to be 21. Now I want to be 30 and ABD. It isn’t smart to hurry time like this, since it goes fast enough as it is. (I looked up the other day and wondered how the hell this decade has already managed to be half over with.) My dissertating friends will tell me that the process isn’t something to be looked forward to at all, and based on my previous experience with my master’s thesis they’re probably right.

But still. I so want to get to work on this project.