Post Prelims blahs and the start of a new trend

So, it's been several months since my dreaded prelims, and I'm now starting work on my dissertation prospectus (aka proposal). The proposal for our program is a vague bit of writing. It needs to say what you want to write, but it doesn't resemble anything that you will actually produce. All in all, it's a way to show what you're about to learn to a bunch of people who think you should have learned these things by now.

A bit frustrating, no?

So, onward and upward, as they say. I will post more and more as I continue to toil for this illustrious prize known as the Ph.D.

I passed!!!

I passed!!! WOO-HOO!!!

Robert Burns is hot!!!

No wonder he fathered so many bastard children. Woo-hoo!

Poor William Cowper

He was terrified of public speaking, but he ended up a lawyer. Before an important public examination, Cowper did some fairly rash things (per John D. Baird):

Seeking temporary relief, Cowper spent a late summer holiday with Ashley Cowper and his family at Margate, only to suffer a disastrous failure of nerve. Convinced that his dearest hopes were allowed him only to be dashed, he could not bring himself to propose marriage to Theadora when the opportunity was given him. When he returned to London the sense of doom returned, and he began to think of escape. At first he hoped to go mad, but as the dreaded date early in December drew nearer the more certainly effective release of suicide recommended itself. About a week before the examination he bought a half-ounce of laudanum. Unable to swallow the fatal dose, he prepared for flight to France, then decided to drown himself, then attempted to stab himself with his penknife (the blade broke), and finally hanged himself with a garter which snapped just as he lost consciousness. He collapsed in his bed, where Thurlow found him in a state which thirty years later that coarse spirit could not recall without emotion. The clerkship and Theadora were lost forever.

Man. That has to suck.

Odds and Ends

Although many folks thought Edmund Burke was a genius (which he was), his nickname at Parliament was "Dinner Bell" because people would leave the moment he rose to speak.

Here's to you, Dinner Bell!

Oliver Goldsmith was often drunk. Once, he was so drunk that he mistook a gentleman's home for an inn... Thus, the beginnings of She Stoops to Conquer.

Here's to you, drunk guy!

William Cowper owned three pet bunnies named Puss, Tiney and Bess.