I suppose the time has come for me to write my inaugural post. Already, in the weeks and a half I’ve been at school, I’ve encountered a handful of minor crises. To start, there was what could be described as a monsoon as I moved into my Vassar-supplied house. But what was the worst of these crises was that my beloved thesis adviser recently decided that she needed to take a leave of absence for this semester. As I was also enrolled in a class she was teaching, I suddenly found myself without a thesis adviser, and with a hole in my schedule. The hole was patched easily enough–I’ve decided to fulfill my American history requirement with a class on African American history, pre-1865. Harder to fix was my lack of a thesis adviser. The history department at Vassar works very hard to match senior theses to professors with expertise in that area of history. I plan on writing my thesis on student revolutionaries in the 20th century (Prague in ’89, Paris in ’68, and the States in the ’60s). As such, it was difficult for the head of the department to find a professor who felt comfortable guiding my research. After a night spent combing the biographical blurbs of the professors provided on the department website, I was elated to hear that I had been assigned an adviser, and that I can keep my topic.
But senior year is not only about academic crises. Everywhere I go, I am reminded that in a few short months I will be joining the workforce. The Word document containing my resume has been open on my desktop for the last few weeks, subtly taunting me. Nothing can reduce a group of poised seniors to hysterics like asking what their future plans are. I keep telling myself that there is a lot of time for me to figure out how to approach the job market, but I know that once theater, clubs, and academics kick into swing, I’ll barely have a second to draft cover letters and search monster.com.
-Lizy
