I am so ready to be done with undergraduate work. Funny, because I graduated in May.

Here's the long-and-short (but mostly short) of it: I wrote a thesis for the honors college at my university. The title was "Perceiving Entrapment: Young Women and the Elements of Identity and Escape in Contemporary Young Adult Literature," and it was a beast. I took three novels (A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, and The Curse of the Blue Tattoo by L.A. Meyer) and spent 22 pages documenting the formation of personal identity for each of the main characters. A real beast, mostly because I was stupid to wait until the last semester of college to write it. But I managed! One of the honors college's requirements was to either present it at a research conference or submit it for publication. I really had no idea where to submit it, so I asked a professor at my university for assistance. He very kindly obliged.

To cut out a lot of boring in-between fluff, I got some feedback today from the helpful professor that suggested that I clarify the reason for picking the three novels I chose to analyze and expand/better analyze two major sections of the paper. These suggestions are completely valid, but I'm at the point where I will be starting graduate school in just over a week, and I really got burned out at the end of the semester from final testing, papers, and graduate school requirements. I must have revised the paper at least 5 times, which is a lot for me! Usually my second draft is good to go.

Now, I get to decide what to do with this paper. I'm thinking of cutting it down to one of the novels, expanding and revising that section, and then submitting for publication. I actually am pretty happy with that idea, the more I think of it. 20+ pages seems like it may be too long for a children's lit. journal, anyway. This requires more thought.