Monday, Jul. 16, 2007 - 8:54 p.m.

So I was discussing my paper with J, saying, "I don't think I really want to finish it.", and he agreed that I don't really have to. The truth is that no one will really care. Unless I change my mind, but frankly, I've given myself a good 7 months to be overcome with the desire to write the paper and it hasn't happened yet. So I don't think I want to. Even taking a broad view of the situation.

Ugh and so I went to campus today to go to a reading group (which I do still like to do even though I don't have to, unlike paper writing), and I became very anxious and nervous that I might run into my advisor or the chair and they would ask me how it's going and I would have to break up with the department right there and then. I did not run into them, but it made me think, "can I just do it by email? They won't really care, I haven't seen them in months anyway." Better anarticulate, timely email than an indefinite amount of time of avoidance, or a gradual fading away and leaving the rest to inference.

And then I just checked my email and my awesome professor, the nice one who thinks my proposed research was really cool and who agreed to chair my committee, the one who suckered me into teaching those horrible ESL classes that precipitated my desire to run far far away from academia and never look back, I got an email from her asking if I want to teach those very same classes again this fall.

I could just throw up.

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