Guess What?

    My thesis is done!
    Well, that's not exactly true. I can hope it's true, but here's the facts: I finished doing the hand-editing last night (with a highlighter and a pen on a printed copy) around 11:45. I worked a half-day today and came home so I could do the changes to the document in Word. It took forever because I spent a lot more time reading it than I'd expected, but it was necessary. So I just finished. FINISHED! And it's printing. The Apple Personal LaserWriter 300 is already moaning and it's only 16 pages into the text (plus iv pages of preliminary matter). It's going to be miserable and screaming after the 103rd page of the 3rd copy. Ah, well, I don't care.
    I'm done!
    Bliss. Intellectual, physical, complete and total happiness.
    Here's what happens now. I send it to the department, c/o my advisor. He distributes the copies to the other 2 committee members. They read it and (with any luck) think it's good enough to sign off on. (Why does that sentence make academic sense when it's grammatically horrid?) Then one of their copies goes to the department head, who reads it and also signs the Approval Form. In the mean time, advisor will have emailed me to let me know (a) that it's fabu, (b) that I don't have to drive to MI to hand-deliver the thing to the grad school, (c) to send the forms for the grad school to the History dept. ASAP. So the dept head reads and signs, the forms arrive, and someone (advisor? secretary?) schleps it to The Graduate School, whereupon it is entered into the abyss of Received Theses prior to the 15 March deadline, guaranteeing that I graduate in April. The Grad school reader reads it and we email comments and edits (grammar, punctuation, other nitpicky shit) back and forth until they're satisfied. I pay the copyright fee, the microfilm fee, the binding fee, the tassel fee, blah blah blah. I ship them however many copies I want to have bound, along with my copyright form. They, eventually, ship one back. And then, eventually, my Masters of Art degree in History, with an emphasis in Modern Europe.
    But for now, it seems very much like it's over, and I could not be happier.