Is it a little Chile in here?

So I dropped off the final copies of my thesis today for my upcoming defense. Printing off four copies of a 150 page thesis is pretty brutal. The four copies doesn't even include the one I will print off for myself... At some point in the last two weeks they reset all the grad student printing accounts without telling anyone. Both Heather and I were reduced to $30; about enough to print two copies. Luckily, my senior adviser came through and offered up his printer. Sadly his printer has that weird glitch where it just stops midway through printing sometimes.... To make a long, painful story short, the theses are in. Just a little over two weeks now until the actual defense. I am kind of looking forward to it, though I am still nervous about the event itself. It will be nice to have that closure. I ran into my second adviser today and he was saying that he really likes the defense because it is a good opportunity to have an academic dialogue. He felt this was something very common where he did his graduate degree (University of Wisconsin - Madison). I have to agree in some ways, though I would rather not have to talk to most of the other grad students any more than I already do.

In other news, I have stepped down from my position as the president of the SA Grad Caucus. While the job was not terribly intense, not having to care about the when, where, and how of the next meeting is nice. I do feel concerned about the person that was elected to take over the position. He can be pretty overbearing and long winded. I guess it isn't my problem to worry about.

I am really going to miss having limitless access to academic journals and a well-stocked library. I have begun looking through some of the journals I use most frequently and getting all the articles I can... Kinda scary. Also, as crazy as this sounds, I will miss writing my thesis. I really enjoyed writing it and am sad that it is over. I have even begun looking at doing some freelance articles for different political magazines. While I already have a couple academic co-authored articles under review, it would be nice to also show that I can write for more popular audiences (and get paid for it). There are a few areas that I feel that I have sufficient expertise to write widely on (not that expertise should stop me, you just have to look at the hacks over at Slate and the New York Times to see that qualifications mean nothing).

Now to go work on perfecting my query letter...