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...