Five years ago, my family packed up my bags and we headed off to Worcester.

Five years ago, we got stuck in immense traffic coming off of the Cape. And then again right outside of Franklin, MA (I remember this only because we stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts).

Five years ago, I arrived on campus at 1 o’clock, and my family scrambled to move me in and set me up…in three hours.

Five years ago, I attended the Mass of the Holy Spirit with my family, and left without them.

Five years ago, I cried. Hard.

Four years later, on May 27, 2011, I cried again – sobbed, more like it – as I left Holy Cross. Tears seem to serve as the bookends of my collegiate career. I came to Holy Cross not knowing another soul and fearful to leave my family. I left four years later with more friends than I can count and a new family.

So, to the Class of 2016 – welcome to the Crusader family, and may your four years be filled with laughs, tears, late nights, essay crises, football games, basketball games, treks into Boston, and, most importantly, Culpepper’s iced coffee.

I first visited Rome in 2004 with a group of high school students on a cultural exchange trip. When we arrived at the Trevi Fountain, my tour guide informed us that it’s a tradition to throw in a coin, which guarantees that you’ll see Rome again. If you throw in two, you’ll supposedly meet the love of your life in Rome, and if you throw in three, you’ll live in Rome for forever. Being the Classics nerd that I am, I wasn’t taking any chances that day, and I threw in about fifteen.

The coins seem to have worked so far; I returned to Rome with my sister in 2010 shortly before I returned to Holy Cross for my senior year.

That trip was filled mostly with me running around Rome and dragging my sister to all of the awesome nerdy sites. No worries; Caitie survived, but I don’t think she’ll travel with me in the near future.

I’m happy to report that the coins seem to still be working. Last week, I found out that I received a grant from both the Vatican and Bodleian Libraries to spend a week in the Vatican Library. I’ll be working with two manuscripts that factor into the matrix of my current research interest, Junius 11. I’ll be leaving at the end of September, which unfortunately means that I’ll have to miss Holy Cross’ Homecoming. But, hey – a week with my manuscripts in Rome? I think I can handle it. I’m really excited about this opportunity, since this is essentially a gateway grant to further grants at other libraries. And, who knows? Maybe I’ll discover something particularly rare in the dusty archives.

All I can say is maybe I should’ve thrown in thirty coins or so.

Yes, this is where I’ll be working. I might not come back…

So, technically, I am a Master of English (MSt). Since I’m in the two year MPhil program, however, I still have another year to go. But I could technically leave Oxford now as an MSt, which is a beyond frightening thought for the rest of academia.

With all of the infinite wisdom that I have gained from my first year in graduate school, I surely must be more informed and knowledgable about my subject. Well, in a way, that’s certainly the case. But you know Socrates’ infamous quote, ‘I realize now that I know nothing’? Yes. That’s how I feel a bit. What’s great about my program is that all sixteen of the students approached the general strand of 650-1500 with such different ideas and expectations. As you all know, I’m all about the manuscripts, and the earlier, the better. But I encountered people who were more focused on dialect, sociological factors, and unique literary instances. I met some classmates who declared that they hated working with manuscripts (which is anathema to me), and others who thought that Middle English was enough of a foreign language and French was more important than Old English. The different perspectives with which all of my classmates have challenged me to approach the same material has been so rewarding.

Here’s the other thing about graduate school. In undergraduate, I feel that professors are looking more for effort. Did you come up with an original research topic? Did you make valid, intelligent points? Can you back up your claims with research? Wonderful. I won’t lie – I wrote a paper or two (or three…) the night before they were due, and I got A’s. My argument was always clear and they were ‘good’ papers, don’t get me wrong. But, in essence, they were just foundation papers. And here’s where graduate school is different – effort is great. But it is not going to get you the highest mark. I find that graduate school looks more for publication possibility. Every last stone has to be turned, and every idea has to be cooked through and completely syncretized. Now, this is not a bad thing at all. I’ve suffered from perhaps not developing my ideas enough in my undergraduate career, and my graduate career is really ironing those kinks out of me. Every sentence, phrase, and word matters. It’s like applying literary theory to your own essays, which is quite the surreal experience. My undergraduate career prepared me wonderfully to think about a myriad of topics in a very wide range, and now my graduate career requires me to look deeper into more specific issues, and how to engage with prior research – how is what I’m doing novel or important to my field? – and potentially challenge previously held notions regarding what I study. Overall, it’s been a completely whirlwind of an academic year. I can honestly say that I don’t think I’ve ever learned this much in a mere nine months. I think the highlight of my academic year here has been accessing a manuscript at a college here, transcribing and translating the text, and then writing an argument about that same text and how the codicological aspects factor into the presentation and interpretation of that same text. Talk about a head to toe treatment. But this is what I want to do, and this immediate contact with manuscripts really fuels my passion for the period and, as cheesy as it sounds, continues to inspire me about my research on a daily basis. To be able to hold and analyze the very same book that someone wrote and read nearly 1,000 years ago is just a stunning experience.  Being able to then interpet that same text within a modern setting is just even more stunning.

If anything, this year – despite the sleepless nights, the insane reading lists, and the endless cups of tea – has reasserted the fact that this is my passion, and that this is what I want to do with the rest of my life. I realize how lucky I am that I can be so young and just know that this is sincerely what I want to do. I mean, maybe I’ll have a midlife crisis at the age of 27 and realize that affording groceries would be nice. But, at the moment, I’m incredibly happy with what I do, and I can’t wait to see what next year’s academic experiences bring.

On June 11th, I technically became a Master of English.

Yeah, that’s a scary thought.

I turned in my dissertation on the images in Junius 11 earlier in the morning, and…well, now I’m finished for the year. It seems strange – I’ve spent nearly every day since mid-April working on the thesis, and suddenly….it’s just finished. There’s still so much more that I want to write about the Junius manuscript, but I was only allowed to write 11,000 words. I presented my dissertation two days later at a conference at the University of Dundee in Scotland. Although traveling to Scotland was a bit of an adventure, the conference itself went really well. I presented at the Scottish Word and Image Group conference, and I was the only Old English presentation. Most of the other presentations focused on the sixteenth century and beyond, so it was helpful to learn how I needed to adapt my material for a non-specialist audience.

So, now that I’ve technically finished for the year, I’m taking advantage of all of the libraries in Oxford and catching up on some reading. I’m working through a few classics at the moment, and I’ll start researching my dissertation topics for next year (if you can believe it…). Until then, I’m working to save up some money for my trip back to Boston starting on July 17th. And, yes, you can bet that I will be meeting up with more than a few Crusaders.

When I moved to England in September, I shocked and awed a little British school boy when he heard my accent. ‘Did you hear that?’ he asked one of his friends. ‘Her accent was American!’ It’s still one of my favorite living abroad moments. Well, since Thursday, there’s been one more American accent in Oxford. Mom is currently visiting me through the beginning of next week (and the weather is perfect. Not.). We’ve already had quite the action-packed schedule. One of my medievalist friends, Hannah, took all of the medievalists to formal hall at her college, Worcester, and Mom was able to tag along for her first formal dinner, complete with a roast pork belly with ginger and rhubarb compote.

Over the weekend, Mom attended both of my ballroom competitions. Yes, that’s right – I had one competition on Saturday and one on  Sunday. Needless to say, I never want to put gel in my hair again. The competition on Sunday was the 39th Varsity match between Oxford and Cambridge. Essentially, you have two teams of nine couples from both universities each, who will dance waltz, quickstep, cha, and jive against each other in a succession of three heats per dance. Dean and I danced on the B-Team.

Dean and I were somewhat nervous about our events since we just learned our waltz and advanced quickstep routine about two weeks before. That’s an incredibly limited amount of time to get the steps down, make sure that we’re dancing it properly, and adjust it to floor sizes. We were happy with how we danced our ballroom overall, but, as usual, our Latin felt stronger.

Photo Copyright Nathalie Raunet

One of the more embarrassing moments of the day (come on, it’s me) came with our Latin walk on. Dean and I learned the choreography the night before the Match (whoops), and he kept on asking me if I felt comfortable with the choreo. ‘Of course!’ I replied enthusiastically.

As you can tell from the second photo, I failed. Wrong leg. Whoops. According to Dean, I might’ve danced it wrong, but at least I danced with conviction. The rest of the audience will never know if my version was correct or not. Well. Wait. No, they know that it wasn’t correct. But hey. Points for effort?

Unfortunately, Oxford lost both the A and B Team Matches to Cambridge.

We all look pretty defeated. But check out my tan.

A-Team lost by 10 points, and B-Team lost by 200 points. It was heart-wrenching. At the end of the presentations, the coaches then gave out awards for the Best Latin, Ballroom, Overall, and Newcomer couples from both universities. I’ll spare you the details, but Dean and I won the best Latin and Newcomer couple for the B-Team (it was announced today after a minor glitch in the results from Saturday). Dean and I were really pleased with that result, and we also came 5th overall in the entire B-Team match. So, our ballroom didn’t bring us down too much (one judge even marked our Quickstep as second place!), which was really encouraging.

My friends then attended the Varsity Ball, but Dean and I had to sleep since we had to be up at 5:30 the next morning to attend our second competition of the weekend. We attended the ISTD Regional Qualifiers in Hove, which is where I won two years ago (it’s all cooooooming back to me noooooooow). I’ve moved up a few levels now, and I was more focused on just qualifying, which I did in both my ballroom and Latin. So, I will be competing at the ISTD Nationals in Blackpool in November again.

Latin Line-Up

I also placed 5th in my Waltz pairs and 3rd in my Cha pairs with Dean. I had a bit of a bumble moment (as usual) for the Latin pairs. I really had to use the bathroom before our final, and I thought that I had enough time. As I was washing my hands, I heard ‘Calling 248 to the floor…calling 248 to the floor’. Yes. 248 was my number. I ran down the stairs, met Mom halfway, who exclaimed ‘YOU’RE ON’. ‘I KNOW’. As soon as my feet hit the stage, though, I just sauntered up to Dean and the music started playing as if nothing had happened. But wait. It gets better. Upon receiving my third place trophy, the presenter and I had a bit of a bumble moment, and somehow the trophy was dropped in the exchange. Usually, these trophies are just harder plastic, so they normally don’t break. Nope. This one did. It broke right into two pieces. The entire room was silent for a good five seconds and then just erupted into laughter. Well, I will never be late for a final again.

Currently, Mom and I are exploring Oxford for a bit. We are headed into London tomorrow to celebrate Mothers’ Day, and then we are off to Cambridge for my first conference on Thursday and Friday.