Old English in New York, One Year In

Well, last Friday, in my whirlwind of finishing small projects, answering student pleas concerning papers and extensions, and reading Margery Kempe -- I managed to overlook posting on the one year anniversary of starting my blog. It all began on the 27th of April, 2006, with the statement that April is not the cruelest month, per TS Eliot's poem.

I've avoided, in the past year, writing what I think is an obligatory blog considering the reasons I have for blogging, and for doing so anonymously. It's not that such things don't concern me -- rather, I've been letting this blog develop as my own work does, tracing both frustrations and excitements as I went through this crazy process of struggling for exams.

Lest I get too meta about all this, the real purpose of this blog was to trace my orals progress. Granted, so little got done in the first months of the blog that much of it was focused on outside thoughts and considerations and ideas. I don't think that's a bad thing. In fact, a lot of the most enjoyable writing I've done has been on the blog rather than on papers I've turned in. My hope, this summer, is to get back to the texts. I've been charged with really living with the texts I'm working on for my exams this summer. This blog -- my work blog, as I refer to it when it comes up in conversation -- has been of much use this past year, making connections with other medievalists and anglo-saxonists, allowing me to enter conversations I might not otherwise have participated in. But I hope -- and we'll see how this goes -- that during this summer, while I study in the Wake Forest library, I can use this space a little more diligently to trace ideas I find in texts.

Most importantly, tho -- I get to go to Kalamazoo again this year, and I will be attending the blogger meet-up (wherever it ends up being held). And the 'zoo -- as anyone who knows me knows well -- always makes me happy. Let the countdown begin! And the rewriting of the paper commence!