Ding Dong! The thesis is done!

I have been telling everyone I know for the whole week: my thesis for my MA in Religious Education is complete and submitted for grading!

Yay!

Yahoo!

Huzzah!

I push the finer limits of tacky self-promotion with an eye toward ensuring adequate celebration. It would just be like me to shrug off this milestone and fail to honour the work and support involved in its passing.

Consider: I started my first graduate course at St. Mark's College in 1999. That's 15 frickin' years!

Now, there's been a lot of non-study gaps in there: I only really began my GDRE (graduate degree in religious education) in 2003, I finished it in 2008 or 9 or something, then started up again in Spring 2012. I haven't taken a course since Jan 2013 and the thesis has been interrupted by a few important life experiences in the past year and a bit.

But, still... it is the achievement of my furthest academic goal that I have imagined thus far. It is the end of any coursework at the post-secondary level and the beginning of potentially instructing at the college level. It is seeing a big project through, and one that has been at the heart of my career as a religious educator.

It represents the huge support that first of all Monique gave me when on stupid occasion I was taking two courses, coaching two teams and representing teachers in the local association when Avila was a newborn. And the support of the college, in all its various staffings that I've seen through the last 15 years.

And it presents me with a What next? What now? experience that I am eager to get rolling on - what's my new project? Where will the work on my thesis lead? Let's discover!

Above all, there's lightness and space in my heart and spirit and mind which has been holding this project for so long. It's just pretty cool.