Today was a turning point for me. I received notification from my graduate school that my degree will be rewarded. After coming to the end of a journey, I am feeling a little euphoric. Achieving my Master’s degree is a huge step for me because of the journey that I had to go through to earn it.

In the end of March of 2009, my mom passed away during my second semester at school. A little over a month later I was at Nankai University studying Chinese again, having had little time for mourning. Then I went to Sichuan for a year to research my thesis. I have to say that my heart was not totally into it. Two months before I was to return home, I found a dissertation by Zheng Xiaowei that totally blew what I had out of the water. It was, unfortunately for me at the time, excellent. I returned home and tried to produce something. Anything. In September, my hard drive irreparably crashed, taking my translated research with it. In December, I had about 30 pages completed. I was completely depressed and drained. I just walked away from graduate school and returned home in defeat.

I literally spent about 3 months or so laying in bed doing nothing. I lived off my credit card until it was maxed out. Dad and Darlene pretty much evicted me from the house in an effort to jump start me. It didn’t really work. I went back to work at the library and remained completely depressed. My friend Nathan recommended treatment for depression after we talked about it. I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. I started taking low dosage prescriptions for it. Interestingly enough, I was able to work through my problems. I started a second job doing hotshot deliveries. It had taken me almost two years, but I decided to finish my degree.

I talked to my adviser and she let me back into school. I finished one paper that was two years overdue. I put off a second one that was finally done two weeks ago. I worked hard on my thesis, using Zheng Xiaowei’s work as a launching point. My defense in December was not pretty, though the criticism was justified and fair. It helped me create a better product. I returned home to the library and went to work on my thesis. Last week, my paper was accepted for the completion of my degree. Today is the end of my journey. It was supposed to have taken two and a half years, but ended up being five years. But as my cousin says, it is not how long it takes, but that you finish.

Recently, there were other endings as well. On May 24th, I stopped working with Mr. S. Our time together was interesting, to say the least. From May 27th to Aug. 5, I went on vacation to help my cousin move from Oklahoma to Myrtle Beach, SC for a new job. He is himself starting a new adventure. In less than three weeks, I am leaving my job at the library (for the 3rd time) and am returning to China. I am once again teaching English in a place I enjoy. Once again moving forward.

To thank all the people who helped me would be laborious. Let me just quote half the saying “Success has many fathers” and leave it at that. The second half of the saying does not apply.

This post is dedicated, as all are, to my Maman. I love you more than mere words can express. Thank you for encouraging me to go to graduate school.

Ah, grad school – how I dislike thee, let me count the ways. A great many of my friends have been very encouraging of my return to the University of Utah to finish up my Master’s program. Thank you all for that I also am interested in finishing and getting my degree so that my life can have some forward momentum. My M.A. degree will be integral to achieving this. Plus, I don’t like to quit and leave things unfinished.

But, grad school! I had forgotten how much I despise writing papers. No, not forgotten perhaps, but subjugated it to my latent ambition while reapplying. Now it returns to the fore.  In addition, it had also slipped my mind how much I had enjoyed playing patty cake with university administration, particularly financial aid. Sitting here broke and avoiding my landlord, I await the money authorized me, but temporarily denied due to a technicality that the office had neglected to mention almost to the point of scrapping the whole thing. The ignominy of having to drop out because of “those” people. Yes, the joy – you can almost imagine the smile on my face, can you not?

Thirdly, I am not a fan of grad students. Don’t get me wrong, I think a majority of them are very good people and a few are even my friends. However, I rarely get to meet such pretentious egos in such confined spaces. I do not think of myself as pretentious, but perhaps those that know me will vote another way. The root of my view is no doubt founded in how I approach history. I look at what is being said about what. Theory is my weakness and I often ignore the many and varied arguments over it that my fellow students seem to revel in. For example, I was in a study space where a certain book was being discussed and evaluated. It was a narrative and detailed one at that. The lack of theory or the little in the way in which to point to a theory was pointed out with a certain disparagement of its merit. I no doubt would have read it and found it a damn fine book. I hope this helps you understand my issue – fundamentally, my lack of interest in historical theory is detrimental to my being a history graduate student, much less a professional academic.

This is why I am so interested in government work. Political theory has only killed people in the hundreds of millions, so a lack of interest in that should not be an issue there, right? Fortunately or unfortunately, however you may prescribe to it, I actually enjoyed political theory.

Yesterday, I experienced that feeling of ineptitude that generally comes with the first day of class in a new language. A new alphabet and vocabulary to wrap myself up in and beat my head against the wall over. I had been glancing over the Korean alphabet haphazardly for a couple of months and have been amazed at the simplicity of it. I realize that looking at it from the first few times that it will not be as simple as it looks, but I have on rose-colored glasses from the decade or so that I have been memorizing Chinese characters.

Actually, I think that this simplicity (follow along for my sake) will be somewhat of a detriment to me. I learned Chinese from the characters – meaning that what I remember and am able to communicate is based on the individualist nature of the characters. For example, I know how to say words based on the ideographic nature of the words no matter how similar they may sound to other words. Trust me, Chinese has about a billion homophones. With Korean’s 19 consonants and 21 vowels, I will have to learn a new paradigm for language learning. This should get interesting.

As for the class, it was pretty nice. The teacher, Kim Hyesun, displayed confident competence. She introduced most of the alphabet for us to remember and gave us a deadline of 2 weeks to learn it. I am pretty confident that if I buckle down it will not be a difficult goal. I learned 3 phrases as well. Basic, but essential:

• 1. 안녕하세요 (annyeonghaseyo) – Hello.
• 2. 반갑습니다 (bangabseubnida) – Nice to meet you!
• 3. 저는Devon입니다 (jeoneun Devon ibnida) – I am Devon.

Also, I should mention that I had an interesting time before the class. I went early morning to Provo to visit the BYU Museum of Art with my friend Jessica Allred. The day did not start off well. After leaving my lair in Midvale, UT, I stopped by the store to purchase that silky smoothness of decadence, A&W Rootbeer. Leaving the store, something flew in my face and I swatted it, promptly earning a bee sting. May you rot in bee hell, you lil’ bastard. I learned from the experience that I am not allergic to bees. In fact, the only thing I know that I am allergic to is the damn sun, if you can believe that.

Upon recovering, I finished my journey to Provo. We got to see two magnificent exibitions – 1. Beauty and Belief: Crossing Bridges with the Arts of Islamic Culture and 2. Object of Devotion: Medieval English Alabaster Sculpture from the Victoria and Albert Museum. Both were excellent and it was a well conceived and maybe even intended juxtaposition of Islamic and Christian art. Both were beautiful in their own ways and it was made even more interesting with Jessica’s intended year long trip to Saudi Arabia to teach English. Go girl! and take a great many pictures.