Year Four and still more!
I’m continuing to document my journey through graduate school ( click here for year 3 , year 2 , or year 1 if you missed them ), and this past year was an unusual one! Yes, that’s right, I’ve made it through four years of graduate school and I’ve still got more to go. At the beginning of the pandemic, I admit I didn’t mind the initial switch to all online classes so much. It added more flexibility to scheduling, and let’s be honest here--sometimes I just really appreciated not having to put on real pants or leave my house. At the end of this year though, I am looking forward to slowly getting accustomed to leaving my house again and seeing people as more than little boxes on Zoom. For a year that often felt like a black hole, a lot happened. I spent last summer taking an intensive Hungarian course, reading a million books for my PhD qualifying exams in the fall, and moving into our new house. I entered the fall feeling a bit drained. I took my qualifying exams (known as “quals”) at t