completing the dissertation
This weekend marks the first weekend in years that I haven't spent working on my dissertation in some capacity. It's been a strange experience to say the least. I've had so much of my identity wrapped up in dissertating, and for good reason: you hardly have time for anything else when you're writing. It does make for a hard transition, though. At the beginning of every semester, the writing program I work in has a teaching summit where we all get together and discuss our work, our strategies, and generally commiserate as teachers and scholars. This fall, I was catching up with our program director and I joked about precisely this phenomenon. When I finish the dissertation, what am I even going to do with all of that time? I figured I was for sure in for a meltdown unless I figured out something equally as time-consuming to fill the void. She just said "or, you know, you could just use the time to be human for a bit and not work on anything." Anyone who kn...