Despite the teabagging, some of my friends have begged me to give 2006 another chance. I am sceptical yet hopeful that the relationship will work out. 2006 has given me flowers and chocolates and said “aw, c’mon, baby, I’ll be good.” So I’ll give it a chance and see how things work out, because deep down I am a hopeless romantic and really want things to turn out okay, and am willing to make the extra effort if that’s what it takes. But I think that, deep down, at least for a while, I’ll be cautious, and hold my heart close, lest 2006 suddenly decides to give me a dirty sanchez.

I don’t want another year like 2005. I asked 2006 to please be nice to me, or at least better than 2005, and it said “Sure”. Then it waited until I was asleep, took pictures of itself teabagging me, and posted them on the Internet. I hate 2006.

Now that I’ve officially finished at Monash, I feel like it’s time to say goodbye to the place that, for better or worse, has been such a part of my life for the past five years. I have this kind of tremendously loving ambivalence towards it, which doesn’t make any sense but means that my feelings towards it are at least cohesive with the rest of my emotional life. Plus, I finally got around to updating the About Me bit in the sidebar, so now is as good a time as any.

Goodbye, Union Building! I look forward to not having to battle my way through you at peak times. Also, I look forward to not having to evacuate you because someone burned toast or some funster phoned in a bomb threat.

Goodbye, Menzies Building! The site of debates, arguments and astonishing feats of wankery, I will miss the way you sway in the slightest breeze, and the way in which that forces me to contemplate my own mortality.

Goodbye, Bus Loop! We didn’t have much to do with each other after second year, I guess, but you’re still a major part of my Monash “experience”. Although, looking back, it was probably a bit rude of me to have sex in you.

Goodbye, Rotunda! I had some great lectures in you, but honestly? Your seats are really fucking uncomfortable, and your restroom facilities inadequate.

Goodbye, Monash Library Document Delivery Services! I would never have gotten my thesis written if it weren’t for you guys. Stupid obscure research.

Goodbye, Rare Books Room! Oh, I probably spent too much time in you, and I had a habit of bringing people to you like I was ushering them to the Promised Land, but seriously? You rock. So much time spent in you, in the company of wonderful people. So much time spent pawing through your collections of zines and lesbian pulp fiction. So much time spent awed in your collection of Swift first editions. So much time spent badgering the poor Rare Books Librarian, who is probably terribly pleased to see the back of me.

And on that note, goodbye, Rare Books Exhibition Space. A source of much wonder and learning in your own right, you were the place in which I attended more than one exhibition opening, and witnessed firsthand the horrific feeding frenzy that occurs when English academics are given unrestricted access to free alcohol. I will never forget my first attendance at such a function, where my normally mild-mannered Lit tutor from first year expounded on the difficulties of finding permanent work in academia while severely invading my personal space, shaking his finger around in an alarming manner, and loudly slurring. “You carn geddany work! I gotsh a PhD and exshperience! Whammore do they want? Ish, ish…ISH UNFAIR, THAT’SH WHAT IT ISH!”. Happily for him and for my personal space concerns, he found work overseas and is by all accounts happy with his lot, although probably still an opportunistic lush. I imagine that’s one thing that doesn’t change, and it kind of really makes me want to become an alcoholic English academic.

At any rate, it’s mostly been a good half-decade (sheesh, I wish I hadn’t just thought of it like that). I hesitate to say that it’s goodbye forever, because I don’t know what’s in store for the future and let’s face it, I’m a glutton for punishment.

Holy fuck. I got First Class Honours.

I am over the moon and possibly a couple of planets. I never expected to do this well; I was hoping for Second Class, Division A, and expecting a lot worse. I was really worried how my thesis would be received, as it doesn’t adhere strongly to any particular theoretical framework, although given the subject matter and the person who wrote it, it does borrow heavily from feminist theory. It’s just not, strictly speaking, a feminist literary theory kind of thesis.

After I found out, my friends Mairghread and LJ found me in the Union building, tearful and smiling inanely. Hugs were given and received. Reactions from my friends and family have generally been of the “Congratulations! Also, duh” variety. My brother-in-law asked who I’d bribed, because he’s a sweetie like that. Stuart, when I rang him at work, shouted “HAHAHA! In your FACE!”, which probably destroyed his reputation as a quiet, well-mannered young man. He has no time for my self-doubt. My favourite reaction, though, was from my father, the blokey-bloke working class hero: he burst into tears.

I’m on a high, and while my cynical inner voice is already trying to point out that it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, I am going to ignore it and spend the next little while telling myself that the world is my slimy mollusc.

I had a birthday on Saturday. It’s the kind of thing I try to avoid, but it tends to roll around once a year anyway, like a gigantic and persistent night soil cart.

You might gather that I hate birthdays. You would be correct. I don’t like having them, and I don’t like celebrating them. It’s not an age related thing, which would be laughable at my age anyway. I’ve had one age-related birthday freakout, and that was when I was going on nineteen, of all things. It was really just that eighteen was a very good year for me and I didn’t want it to end. Then, on my nineteenth birthday, I was involved in a hit and run car accident, so I was RIGHT to dread the damn thing. That philosophy has pretty much stuck with me.

This year’s was pretty good, though. I visited my immediate family, complete with their offspring. My nephew Myles and niece Alexandra were disgustingly cute as always, and Baby Harriet’s present to me was avoiding spitting up breastmilk all over me, although she did start crying when I tried to sing to her, which puts her in a class with all the people who go to Extreme Karaoke.

My net friend Katie has also been in Australia, and hence my absence (also, I am lazy). We hung out and I tried to convince her to play Stupid Texan for me, but she refused to put out. Honestly, what’s the point of having international net friends visit you if they refuse to stand in the middle of the Queen Victoria Market on a busy Sunday afternoon loudly exclaiming “Golly, this here sure is different from how we do it in Houston!”? Some people are no fun. Also on her visit we learned about Ye Olde Worlde pimps at the Old Melbourne Gaol, and photographed ourselves doing rude things in front of Parliament House. Upon seeing Jeff Kennett’s portrait, she correctly identified him as an evil, snake-eyed man, at which I may have emitted a small squeal of delight. Sure, she may not have lived down to my ideas of how an American tourist behaves, but I think I’ll keep her.

I topped the weekend off by having a lovely barbecue which was nice and relaxing and was almost enough to make me decide that celebrating my birthday is actually a pretty fun and nifty thing to do. Almost. See, it was a great barbecue and I had a lot of fun, but I’m not entirely sure I’ve made it clear here just how deep the birthday celebration hatred runs.

There’s being busy, and there’s being self-absorbed, and then there’s being an absolute fuckwit.

I was on a tram in the city on Remembrance Day last week. Pulled up at the intersection of Swanston and La Trobe, an announcement came over the loudspeaker that since it was about to be 11am, the tram would be staying at the stop to observe the minute’s silence. And fair enough, too.

However, a charming example of humanity apparently didn’t feel the same way. “Awww, what?” he whined, in a loud, listen-to-me, Mummy! kind of way. “I fucken paid for this!” He glanced belligerantly around the carriage, looking for support for his one-man anti-war-victim rant, his suffering and the few bucks spent on a ticket quite obviously analagous to the plights of those who were now putting him a full minute behind in his terribly important business. Dying tragically and pointlessly in a war declared by those who will never come close to fighting it? Pffft. Spending five bucks on a Metcard only to be forced to sit in silence while a tram doesn’t move for sixty seconds? INHUMAN.

Fortunately our charming hero was the subject of many greasy eyeballs for his outburst, my own among them. He actually seemed to deflate as he took in the disgust of the other tram passengers. It was rather neat, in a way.

My thesis is handed in. All sixty freakin’ pages and exuberant use of semicolons of it. I can’t quite adjust to not having to work on it anymore. I keep getting spontaneous attacks of the guilts, thinking I should be doing something more productive than lounging around on the couch drinking beer and catching up on my brain candy reading. But it’s over! Ha!

That was just over a week ago. After getting my thesis bound at the Uni publications desk, staffed by none other than my awesome, spunky and devastatingly witty friend Mairghread, I trotted up to the seventh floor of the Menzies building to hand it in, only to discover that the office was closed for lunch. So to kill time, I spent some time and money at the bookshop, then paid a surprise visit to my supervisor to show her the finished product, prancing into her office and presenting one of the copies to her in a manner not unlike that of a proud cat presenting its human with its latest small deceased rodent. Eventually the handing in and signing of the official forms occurred, which took all of about thirty seconds. All that buildup and anticipation for something that turned out to be not very exciting and over very quickly; it was like I’d gotten back together with my first boyfriend or something.

Once that was all over, I drove to Stuart’s to pick him up for our little sojourn to the Macdeon Ranges. Bushwalking was done, good food was eaten, sins against God were committed. It was beautifully relaxing, except for the part where Stuart chased a gigantic huntsman spider into bed with me. He claims it was an accident and that he was actually trying to catch it (which he eventually did), but I can’t help but wonder if it was his passive-aggressive way of informing me that a threesome is out of the question.

Now I am trying to make my brain realise that a) it really is allowed to relax and b) some creative writing would be a nice thing to achieve. Yesterday’s sterling effort of standing in a wading pool and drinking dangerously alcoholic punch at a Cup Day barbecue was a good one, although it has to be said that it didn’t do much for the creativity.

I’m freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I’m no longer a scummy Uni student!

Unless I get into the postgrad course I’ve applied to do next year. In which case, I retract the previous two sentences. Punishment, meet the Glutton. Stacks on!

So, I have emailed my thesis supervisor the pretty-much-final draft of my thesis. It’s the last time she’ll look at it, which has to come as some sort of a relief for her. It’s kind of hard to believe that something that’s been part of my life and my headspace for so long is coming to its end. Hard to believe how different my life was a year and a half ago when I started Honours. Hard to believe how much I’ve changed, and what I’ve learned over that time. Hard to think about the fact that Bec and I would have been graduating together without getting a lump in my throat.

Although it’s driven me to distraction, not to mention tears, on many occasions, I’m so glad I’ve stuck with it. I’ve learned a lot, not only about my subject matter (speaking of which, I think I’m going to lay off reading anything about incest for a while after this next week is over), but all sorts of jolly intangibles that have taught me about who I am and how I work. It’s given me a greater sense of discipline about my writing, and has forced me to find the time to focus on my more creative work - an important lesson, because as anyone who writes knows, it can be so easy to deprioritise your creative life when big things start happening.

I’m seeing my supervisor later on today, when she’s had a chance to read it all. I’m hoping there’s no major reconstruction work that needs to be done that we’ve both somehow missed up until now. I’m also fervently hoping that she doesn’t say anything like “Aimee, some of these latest changes read like they’ve been made at the last minute by someone operating on very little sleep and possibly under the influence of alcohol.” Because if she does, I am honest to a fault, and will be forced to admit that I was up until all hours last night, making merry at Gurlesque, and pole-dancing and shaking appropriate bits of my anatomy to Peaches’ “Shake Yer Dix”.

Which I feel would perhaps not be overly beneficial to our professional student/teacher relationship.

Today I experienced what it feels like to think you’ve accidentally deleted the final draft of one of your thesis chapters.

I think the feeling can be described as “your heart dropping into your stomach, which is being pounded by sledgehammers”.

And now that I’ve experienced it, I never want to have that feeling again.

It was especially galling considering I’m a compulsive backer-upperer. For twenty heart-stopping minutes I thought I was going to have to retype the chapter in its 8500 word entirety from my hard copy nearest-to-done draft. Which I don’t really have time to do, given that I have to hand it in to my supervisor on Monday, and the whole thing is due Monday week (yes, 24th of October, not the end of September as I was mistakenly and heart-attack-inducingly told earlier).

Fortunately, it was purely a file-naming error on my part. And I found a backup anyway. But dear GOD that was frightening. My thesis is due in ten days. TEN DAYS! Eeek!

I must give a shoutout to Stu here, however, who rang me after I sent him a my-life-is-over kind of text message, and offered to retype it for me while I worked on the other chapter. I will be downloading Salt N Peppa’s “Whatta Man” just so I can do an interpretive dance to it just for him.

I had just enough time to finish both my heart attack and my coffee before I had to come to work today. And might I add, listening to Tori Amos songs about miscarriage while already in a tearful and fraught state of mind? Soooo not a good idea.

Like when instead of dropping your friendly effervescent tab into the glass of water you’ve just poured, you accidentally drop it into your housemate’s half-full wine glass from the night before.

I think it’s fairly safe to say I’m not a morning person.