Cha cha cha changes!

Summer is fast slipping away, to be replaced by the more golden amber hues and soft breezes and cool nights of Autumn. I sit here, in my former reading room, surrounded by moving boxes full of my stuff. Books and crystal and coffee cups and computer paraphanelia and clothes...all nestled into cardboard, awaiting the burly guys who'll put it all in a semi-truck and move it 5 hours south-westward down the 401, to my new home in Toronto.

I'm going to York, to do my MA in Communications and Culture. So I've rented a house in my old stomping grounds off the Danforth and tomorrow I drive myself and my dog Sandy back there to start the whirlwind leading-up-to-the-first-day-of-school activities. Meetings with advisers, course selection (feels so late compared to when you do it in the undergraduate years!), finding an RAship, settling into the new house, creating a new routine, that of a graduate student.

I'm hoping to get some publishable work out of my coursework this fall. I did present at the ASA meeting this past weekend and was once again mistaken for faculty and once again shocked them when they found out that I'm just starting my graduate study. But I need to start working towards journal articles, book chapters, editing a book, that sort of thing.

I'm not sure what to expect though. I've already learned that I can't base it on the rythym and demands of Concordia because it isn't a sociology program at York. Looks like the reading requirements will be lighter, despite the bump up in status.

And of course I've got to find a thesis topic. I have a few that I'm toying with, but I want to see what sort of facilities and people are in the program before I narrow it down too hard.