Spring things…

Every doctoral program has a different kind of preliminary exam. There are lock-you-in-a-room-while-you-answer-essay-question exams, theory prompts, oral presentations, proposal drafts, and combinations of all of the above. My department gives us two weeks to write two large papers - one theory/conceptual paper and one proposal. Although this isn’t a ton of fun, I have to give them credit and acknowledge that I have spent the last few months really digging in and getting ready, and now that it’s almost over, I feel pretty good. (I felt especially good after entering the majority of my references into the formatting software - so tedious…) I’ll feel better on Friday when I hand it in, and then, hopefully, I’ll forget about it until it’s time to get it back.

While I’ve been working on my prelim, I’ve been doing lots of other things. I’ve discovered that I can’t write for 14 hours a day, and even sleeping 10 hours a night (which I’m not really doing anyway) that leaves a decent amount of time for other pursuits. My most recent is planting little herb seedlings in my various pots and planters. Jake got me a Chia herb garden for Christmas, and I planted the little seeds in February or March. They’ve been thriving in their tiny clay pots, but I realized that you can’t really expect 15 basil plants to peacefully coexist in a 2.5” container. So I pulled out some empty pots from the closet and I am now the happy container gardener of 14 basil seedlings, 4 baby parsley plants, some rather tragic looking cilantro, and the most delicate looking little mass of marjoram seedlings (still in the clay pot). I think I probably need some more containers to really do it justice, and I’m simply thrilled. Even if I lose a few (which I inevitably will), I’ve got high hopes for pesto and tabouli later this year. And they are so cute, with their tiny little leaves.

Back to work…