D-O-N-E

That's right, I'm a master yo. I presented and handing in my thesis last night. Presentation went great. Even Ms. Colombia went to see it because she wanted to understand more about what I'm interested in and what I do. She referred to me as a "total nerd" afterwards. Heh. I warned her...

Still, I can't be totally concluded without a bit of distaste in my mouth. My thesis did not finish with the high standard that I had set for myself. It's still good (probably good enough for the A) but I'm quite critical of my work and it just lacked the punch that I was after. There are a couple reasons for this:

1. I received absolutely zero guidance from my professor...and, I needed some. The difficulty in writing a much longer paper is that it's dense. Organizing thoughts and arguments becomes more difficult. I went to my professor in September with very specific questions and sought very specific advice. But, he was typically useless. I guess he is just miscast as a teacher and he's ultimately not a very good one.

2. Working fulltime meant I had less time to fix things properly. Without guidance, finishing the thesis, at times, was like trying to batter down a wall with my head. Through brute force tactics I was able to organize and reorganize to continually improve the paper. But, that takes time and I've been short on time of late, so I ultimately got the thesis to a level that was acceptable, but not perfect.

3. That whole fiancee/Ms. Colombia thing. Damn distracting those cute Colombian girls.

In the end, I think I just wanted to be done. For awhile I was striving for perfection but several thoughts came to me: perfection is impossible and this is an MA thesis, not a PhD dissertation. The expectations are lower, the final product is smaller, and if I go the PhD route, then I can strive for perfection along the way. Ms. Colombia summed it up best: "At this point, I don't care about your grade, I just want you to have the degree."

Anyway, we all went to the pub after the presentation. A lot of people that I've met here in London showed up and that was very nice. My professor even came and I chatted with him for a good while. It's too bad he's such a lousy teacher, because he's a really smart guy and has great insights on Middle East politics (the issue he primarily works on). Of course, going to the pub make this a relatively rough morning, but hey, you only finish an MA once (or sometimes twice).

Monday I fly to Rome, so posting is going to be fairly sparse over the next couple weeks. Five days in Rome, then I'm off to Berlin for four, London for two, Paris for two, London for four, and then we fly to the States. Ms. Colombia and I fly to Chicago on November 15th, spend a week there, then to DC, she flys back to Colombia on Dec 3. The next month is going to fly by (bad pun intended).

...Still no word on Plamegate and the Karl Rove players.