I hit a rich vein of thesis materials today: a thesis on a related topic that is a veritable gold mine of sources. So often am I likely to be making reference over the next year, I had the thing printed and it now resides in one of the curious two-ring binders that are the UKs equivalent of our three-ring sort. Once I finish it tomorrow morning, and perhaps print off a few of the key cited journal articles, I will be in better shape to discuss the thesis plan with Dr. Hurrell tomorrow afternoon.
Tomorrow will also bring the second tutorial that I am teaching for the St. Hugh’s summer school. I got the essay tonight, so it has become another element of the clutch of reading material that I need to get through in the next fifteen hours or so. Little time remains for Sweetness in the Belly – a novel my mother sent me – or “Barn Burning” – a short story that I told Linnea I would read months ago. I also picked up a used copy of Far From the Madding Crowd. For some reason, I absolutely love the sound of that title. Somehow, the sounds and syllables combine magically in a way that has nothing to do with its meaning, which has never been very clear to me anyhow.
For the rest of the summer, I’ve decided to feel guilty about not traveling whenever I am doing thesis work, guilty about not doing thesis work whenever I am not traveling, and absurdly guilty at times when I am doing neither. That way, I will hopefully manage to accomplish the two major goals of the summer in the time that remains before Michaelmas 2006 begins. To anyone who worries that such guilt will keep me from enjoying things in general, they need not be concerned.
PS. Life is full of unbloggable surprises (though I don’t have time to relate them at the moment, anyhow).
Studied Far From the Madding Crowd for English exams (age 15/16). Title is good, rest depends on your liking for Thomas Hardy in general and at his most cheerful. Oxford has a city centre pub of the same name.