There’s a reason I called this Save Me From Grad School.  I need saving.  I’m a thesis away from an M.A. in English Literature with a concentration on early twentieth century American shiznit.  My thesis will be on early twentieth century Jewish-American Literature.

No, I’m not Jewish. It’s OK, though. It’s what I like. Yes, I work in IT and spend my days worrying about data flow. It’s OK. I can be good at two things.

I tell people I want this degree like some girls I know want a really expensive purse. In my case, this purse is tens-of-thousands of dollars, but whatevs. I want this thing so bad, it hurts.

So, thesis. I’ve been avoiding registering for my thesis because I hit a wall. In December, I was done. Done. DONE. Done with a capital D and an exclamation point. Except thanks to the sunk costs cognitive bias, I wouldn’t say this to anyone. And I’ve worked through it. I joined a new gym, stopped eating anything that wasn’t a vegetable, fruit or discernable as meat (thanks, Tim Ferris! Thanks crazy CrossFit folks!) and working off three years of late-night readings, six-credit semesters, marathon paper-writing weekends and something that resembled a nervous breakdown in Spring 2011 (I actually did ask my therapist if he thought it would be OK to voluntarily check myself in somewhere. He, thank god, advised against it). In addition to my ridiculous mental decline, this has also taken the physical form flab and my rapid decline from respectable 8-minute-miles to my sad and lumbering 12-minute-miles.

Today, I did two WODs at Crossfit Nyack. Well, if we want to be technical, I think I did 3 WODs. I showed up at the gym at 8:10 AM with Jo Sinclair’s The Wasteland in my hand. I read The Wasteland until I caught a ride to the “throwdown” we were doing in Chestnut Ridge. And, I remembered why I’m doing this in the first place. I love this shit. I love Jo Sinclair. I love thinking about theory and narrative and all that goes with it. I just need to take a huge gulp of air and register. I went to the throwdown, worked out, came home, took a nap, and went back down to the gym and killed myself. It was spiritual. It was almost a ritual. Actually, it was more like an exorcism.

Afterwards, I came home, sat down, emailed the graduate director at Lehman, checked the start date for the Spring semester (January 27! I’m not too late!), and picked up The Wasteland again. If I can do three WODs in a day, I can write a 60 page thesis and be done with this motherfucker.

Watch out, Jewish-American literature. I’m coming to mess you up.