10 months planned

I am back in Canada at the moment, having been to one wedding, another one coming up this weekend, and my high-school reunion the middle of August. Canada has treated me well so far, the weather is hot, the Pacific Ocean is cool, there have been far too many babies and kids around, but all in all, it's been a good vacation. This trip has also helped secure a couple more months of my future. As it stands at the moment, I will be in Germany from September to December, working on my thesis, giving papers in South Africa and Sweden, and hope to submit right before Christmas. Then I head back to Canada to spend Christmas with the family, down to Orange County for the huge Classics conference right after New Year, then off to my new digs in Victoria for 6 months starting January.

What's this, you say. The Ancient Historian is heading back to her mother-land and finally moving back home. Well, yes, the rumours are true. My undergrad supervisor has hired me to help him on the book he is currently writing (and possibly also an article). So it looks as though I will not be heading back to the UK (at least for the next year). I'll still have to defend my thesis and stuff so I will probably head over there for a week or so a couple of times to do some administrative stuff but at least for the next 10 months, I will be elsewhere. In part, I am quite excited to be working on a major research project that is not my thesis, and learning other aspects of my chosen career path, but alternatively, it's going to be so weird to move back to Canada. Don't get me wrong, I do love Canada, but I've been away for so long it will be weird to try and get use to the Canadian way of life again and to come back to my undergrad institution, work with professors that knew me when I was just a little undergrad and friends who all have "real lives" now and yet have remained in and around Victoria. I'm ansy, but who knows what will come up next. This is only for 6 months and I will still be applying for jobs pretty much everywhere so after the 10 months is up, who knows where I will be. And of course, I still have 4 months of adventure in Germany to get through first.

The life of a grad student: Never boring, always up in the air, and always contains a healthy amount of uncertainty. You really just have to sit back, enjoy the ride, and hope that at some point, you'll end up exactly where you are meant to be...

The end of an era?

As I've spent the last couple of weeks packing up my life here in Scotland, I've started feeling a little strange that my time here has almost come to an end. As soon as I got back from Rome, I moved out of the flat that I had lived in for the last two years. Our lease was up and since I didn't really know where I was going to be, I ended up not getting another flat here, but instead crashing in a friend's spare room which she so graciously offered to me. I've been basically living out of suitcases for the last month, trying desperately to finish the final chapter of my thesis, and get everything sorted out. About two weeks ago, I was ready to go! Most of my closest friends had moved away, the town started filling up with tourists, and I had a number of frustrating circumstances that I was dealing with. I sort of just wanted to run away and hoped that would solve the problem. But I stuck it out, and the last 2 weeks have been amazing. Unfortunately, I am now leaving in 2 days, for about 5 weeks in Canada, then back here for 10 days to really get my stuff together, then off to Germany. Don't get me wrong, I'm really looking forward to the next adventure, but at the same time, this town has (at times) been really good to me. It's comfortable, known, and easy. Germany will be amazing, but at the same time, I fear that I will feel isolated as my German is not nearly as good as it should be. I'm scared of not being able to finish my thesis on time (as 5 months will probably fly, especially since I am giving a paper in South Africa in October that will take away from thesis writing time). I guess I shouldn't get too sad yet since, as it stands at the moment, I will be back here in Scotland as of February to defend my thesis, do any corrections, and just try and find a job. But that's equally scary. With so much uncertain, it's kind of like crossing a river with the hope that the bridge you are in the process of building will hold lest you get swept away in the current. I'm told that everything will work out as it should, but that's not always the kind of comfort I need at the moment. I don't do well with uncertainty and the fact that I'm almost to the point where I will be out in the real world is kind of a scary thought, especially when I've become so good at being a student. This is the world I know. I guess academia is not much different once you transfer over to the professor side, but it will still be quite a change, one that I look forward to, but with a healthy sense of fear.

This post has been a bit of a ramble, but this is the turmoil of my life at the moment.