The End

Hello, blog friends!  I apologize for my long absence, but things have been hectic here in my neck of the woods.  Since my last post, I have:

• Had on-campus interviews for teaching positions
• Completed my dissertation
• Defended my dissertation (and passing with flying colors!)
• Received encouraging words from my advisor
• Accepted a visiting position in a nearby state
• Won dissertation awards (including a very cool one)
• Finished teaching my last course at my current institution
• GRADUATED!!!!!!
• Located housing in my new city

I’ve been so blessed.  Faculty, friends, and family have been so wonderfully supportive over the last few months.  It’s funny how finishing my Ph.D. made so many people tell me how they really thought about me (my advisor, turns out, thinks I am a great writer and I should have no trouble getting my manuscript published!). Not meaning to brag, but it has been so edifying and enlightening.

2010 is going to be a year of great adjustments, not only for me as I start a new life as a professor at a new university, but also because other people in my life have got their own changes going on.  Maybe it’s the start of the new decade, but change is in the air!

Normally I don’t adapt well to change, so this is a bit overwhelming.  Anyone with advice about transitioning from grad school to a professorship, please feel free to share in the comments.

With these changes, it seems like a natural progression to stop posting on this blog.  There are a few reasons behind this.  I don’t have the time to do much more than navel-gazing (which can be too self indulgent on a permanent basis), I will be on the job market again next year, my time as a graduate student is finally over, and due to some personal things I am feeling particularly vulnerable and concerned about my privacy.*  I will continue to post comments on blogs and will probably stay with Twitter, although now I’m thinking about switching to just my personal account and setting it to private.**  If you don’t mind having this address clutter up your feed reader, feel free to keep me in there in case I change my mind, but if not, I appreciate each and every one of my readers who’ve shared in my successes and disappointments over the past few years.  You are a wonderful bunch of people and I wish you all the best!

*I had some troubling student interactions that have made me more cautious, plus things like Facebook’s wacked-out privacy fiasco of earlier in the year made me think more carefully about what I post online (it was nothing big, just…enlightening).

**If you want to know my personal Twitter name in case I combine the two accounts, drop me an email at historyenthusiast [AT] hotmail [DOT] com.

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