Grateful for the end of some things.

I recently got word that the Journal of Adolescent Research is going to publish the article version of my thesis (with me as the first author!). My little heart thumps loudly at the thought of all my work being printed in a big, fancy, peer-reviewed journal. Only people with letters after their names do things like that. Wait. I have letters after my name. In case you didn’t know my name is actually:

Liann Seiter M.S.

It even says so at the top of my resume (but only after a colleague suggested it). Before then is just read:

Liann Seiter

So much fancier with those extra letters eh?

In related news, I finally got around to calling BYU to get my diploma mailed to me—apparently there was a hold on my account because I had not turned in an ecclesiastical endorsement for fall semester. That honor code office, always keeping an eye out for my soul even as an alumni. Luckily I got that cleared up. I’m graduated and can have my boyfriend over as late as I want. But thanks to my 40 hour a week work schedule “as late as I want” usually means 11, sometimes 11:30.

I keep thinking that maybe when I get that fancy piece of paper this graduation thing will feel more real. But in all probability I will open that package, sit in the middle of my bedroom floor next to a pile of my laundry and cry.

There’s something about finishing such a hard thing that makes me want to cry. I don’t know quite how to explain it, but it’s something like this: I can emotionally revisit the pain of all those lonely months of working on my thesis, be happy that that damn paper is finished, feel grateful it was good enough to publish, and wallow a little in sadness because I won’t be able to sit around and shoot the intellectual breeze with my cohort in that little grad lab ever again.

I’m grateful. So grateful I don’t even know quite how to express it without a little rambling.