So, I'm starting to look at various programs/things to do after next year (assuming I finish the damn master's degree of course). I tend to freak every time this happens. My motto since undergrad has pretty much been fill it out and see what happens. Inevitably I've been put in pretty good places, that have given me skills that I needed. FPU is a perfect example. The professors, community, and colleagues were exactly what I needed at this point in my life. Unfortunately I don't really do the whole change thing well, so the idea of leaving the wonderful people at FPU scares the crap out of me.

However I'm a little better situated than I was after my undergrad studies. I know what degree I want, all I have to do is find somewhere that offers ethnomusicology and early music (medieval please god), hopefully has a decent trad Irish music community, and is financially feasible to complete it. No biggie, right? Riiiiiiiiiiiight (insert sarcasm here).

As if that weren't enough, I have been overrun by the sense that I'm a little more than egotistical in assuming that I'm going to finish the master's in ethno by the end of the year. Is that bizarre? Has anyone else felt that? It's hard for me to believe that this time next year I'll have THE THESIS written and defended, and a shiny piece of paper with my name and Master of Musicology plastered all over it. I guess the biggest thing for me to remember is that I don't have to write the Norton Guide to Blues F & D. I do feel that I have some good and important things to say about this music that haven't been said before, which is something that not everyone can say about their thesis topics. But I want to do it well, and sometimes when I get caught up in the "Oh God don't screw it up," like sometimes in papers/presentations, that I can't get what I want to say out in a coherent presentation (either spoken or written). Something to work on.

Right now, it's look for programs and do the fieldwork time, so I guess the other worries will just have to be pushed to the side right now.

Peace, Love, and Tunes,

Mac.