Phhhheeeewww!

I’ve just sent a draft of my master’s thesis to my advisor. It’s missing a chapter and the conclusion and lots of other stuff, but still I’m a little amazed that I’ve gotten this far. I started the thesis before we left Denmark, about 4 years ago. Of course moving to another country and working full-time in an absorbing job are reasonable reasons for delaying finishing the thesis. But in reality, even if I’d had nothing else to do, I don’t think I’d have done it before now. I did, after all, have plenty of time in Denmark to work on it before we came, and didn’t get very far. Part of it was the normal thing about not really knowing what you’re doing before you figure out what you’re doing, which takes time. But there were all sorts of scary and mysterious monsters too. I guess lots of people have them. Somehow now the monsters have shrunk down to toy size, or gone crashing off through the bushes, hopefully never to be heard of again, and the thesis just seems like a lot of hard work and not a Herculean task that must be accomplished while strung out in a torture chamber. Actually, up until the last few days, when I was starting to feel a bit pressured, I was even enjoying working on it.

I have to give the baby some credit, actually. Getting pregnant gave me a deadline and more motivation to finish, because I really don’t want to start my life as a mama with it still hanging over my head. Also, most of the work I’ve done on it has been under the influence of second trimester “happy hormones”. They’re great, by the way, I can sometimes feel them being released. I wish life could always be this way. And somehow, too, I think deciding to go ahead and get pregnant, even though the thesis wasn’t done (the original plan was to wait), was sort of a vote of confidence in myself that has somehow had a self-fulfilling effect.

When I recover from the last few days and feel like writing words on the computer about the thesis, I’ll tell a little more about it. Meanwhile I bought a pack of shortbread cookies as a little reward and celebration, and I'm going home to REST!