So I survived Midterms, and I survived them well. And then I had to catch-up on all the readings I didn’t do when I was writing my mid-term. And now it’s time to write some final paper proposals and um, figure out my thesis.

Because if I want to be one of the masochistic 10% that graduates in June, my thesis needs to be in on April 13th.

I’m definitely going to develop one of my final papers from this quarter into a thesis, and I have to write a formal proposal over winter break. My conflict is choosing the topic. I could go the “easy” route and use my Tocqueville-and-Hobbes-Through-A-Feminist-Lens-esque paper, because I rock at feminist theory. Or, I could turn my yet-to-be-defined-Carl-Schmitt-Machiavelli-Aristocratic-Elements-of-Democracy paper into the ultimate (if I pull it off) thesis. I am worried the former would pidgeon-hole me; I’m already been told that as a woman specializing in political theory, a field dominated by men, I will be expected to know/teach feminist political theory. On the other hand, I love Tocqueville. The latter is complicated, because a lot of Schmitt, and commentaries on him are not translated into English. I think I’d have enough to work with for the thesis though. It’s just a matter now of nailing down the latter topic, because I need to do that for my final paper in my Schmitt class anyway. Thus, this weekend, I am reading through hundreds of pages of things I may or may not use for paper/thesis.

There’s a birthday gathering tonight for one of the girls in my poly-sci section tonight, so I’m going to go to that, and also hope the guys from my section show up because they are generally anti-social and I’d like to hang out with some of them outside class. And no, not because I’ve developed crushes on any of them (only one of them is my type, and he’s married. Of course), but because I actually like most of them.

The fact that I’m updating LJ is a sign that I have ceased to be productive for the time being, so I’m going to get out of the office, get some lunch, and hang out in the lounge until class.