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It was interesting the other day to trip across this brief essay in the ranking of the best graduate Theology programs in the United States. This wasn't just because both of my degrees are held to come from top-five programs, although that was pleasant to read. The task of ranking college programs is notoriously difficult, but I couldn't help but ( Read more... )

Some random bits of life, typed over the last day or two: I had a grand conversation late Sunday night with Dan over Skype, and we talked into the earlier hours of the Feast of my faves Perpetua and Felicitas (and Saturnus and the rest, who never got so much credit). He brought me up-to-date on a wise trimming-down of his dissertation, with Ralph ( Read more... )

Touchdown. The last of the three balloons that my Aunt Helen gave me at dinner when I passed my dissertation defense on April 9th has now finally settled to the ground. (I've been watching this - slowly - for months, curious to see how long this one would last.) There must be some sort of vague symbolism and symmetry in that: this is my last ( Read more... )

I've been stuck in the apartment, puttering away at pre-move work, for most of this last week. Social activities have been intermittent, but enjoyable. Little breaks of that sort have been empowering me along the way, giving me smiles to last through days of then working by myself.

The Lloyds had me over for dinner last Wednesday, with Michel ( Read more... )

My chief distraction the last few days since returning home has been that I returned to find that Marquette had helpfully disconnected my cable and internet service while I was away. Nice. At first I thought that it might be storm damage: just an outage related to the massive thunderstorms that had hammered the Chicago area, and had also hit ( Read more... )

Recovering from graduation. I really didn't think that I was particularly nervous or stressed about graduating, but my body told me differently: I didn't get much sleep the two nights before, and so I crashed hard on Monday. If anything, I suspect that I was more wired about the cookout afterward, which I held over at Dan and Amy's, thanks to ( Read more... )

Off to graduate! Professor Michel René Barnes, long an unofficial advisor as well as teacher and friend, will stand in for Professor Michael A. Fahey, my Doktorvater, and do me the honour of hooding me.

More "taking care of business" today. Getting my alumni card (one of the benefits is a 58% discount on interstate moving with one particular moving company, which could shortly be useful), rescheduling a hair cut with my stylist who left early for feeling ill today, returning more overdue library books and scanning through others in search of ( Read more... )

Aaauuggghhh!!! Mortar boards?!! Every picture I saw of Marquette Ph.D. robes had tams, not mortar boards! I never would have come here if I'd known I had to graduate in a propeller-beanie and not a cool tam! I guess all the cool Marquette people have tams made instead when they buy their robes.