A week ago I handed in my thesis. Six days ago I got an e-mail from my adviser saying that it was a "triumph" and that I "should be very proud."
I am.
I've written here about my trip to London, but I haven't really mentioned what it meant for my thesis, or to me.
My thesis first: If it weren't for Anthony Blunt's memoir and the funding I got to go see it, I wouldn't have had a leg to stand on. Well, I mean, I would have I guess, but I would have written a very different thesis and I doubt it would have been as triumphant. I probably would have focused on George Smiley quite a bit more. John Le Carré would have moved to the center. It still would have been about the Cambridge Spies stories, but they would have been figured as part of spy literature and not as their own canon. As it is now, my thesis is the first of its kind. It feels real-world-applicable. And it's the perfect blend of fiction and history. So I'm very happy about that.
I'm also very happy about how the trip to London went from a personal standpoint. I engineered the whole thing and nothing went wrong. I packed the right clothes. Nothing was rushed. If anything, I had too much time, but it was easy to fill it. I made new friends, I saw new plays, and I learned new things about the English language. For instance, in American English, if you were to say that you quite enjoyed something, that would mean that you enjoyed it more than if you just said you enjoyed something. In British English it means that you enjoyed it less. Huh.
For the past seven or so months I've been mulling over what storytelling is. I know, for instance, that my dad is a storyteller. I know that writers are storytellers. I've decided that most conversation is storytelling.
Going to London, taking painstaking notes on Anthony Blunt's memoir, and then coming back and translating those notes into a chapter plus of prose felt a lot like storytelling too. Anthony Blunt was telling his story, obviously, but I was telling one too. It felt good, and it had a point.

Anyway, after I turned in my thesis, Roommate J, CC, and I celebrated with drinks at Triumph (appropriately enough). We're doing that each time one of us turns in a thesis. Last night we went back for CC. Next week it's Roommate J's turn.
Freshman year, this month felt so far away. I wasn't sure what sophomore year would bring, yet alone senior year. I sure couldn't have predicted that the weekend after I turned in my thesis I would bundle into the car and drive to Northern Virginia, where I would set up base camp for a weekend at the DC Cherry Blossom Festival with my two best Princeton friends. These are the kinds of stories Dad tells about his Princeton days: "Oh, we borrowed so and so's car and we drove to Boston for such and such thing and this and that happened and then we drove back in time for class on Monday." I always really enjoyed those stories, but even though I've always operated in a register of friendships/relationships more similar to my dad's than my mom's I never thought that would be me. This past weekend, it was.
Triumph!