Two in a row
I am afraid I may have given my friend's husband the wrong impression of me last night, when I mentioned I had been out drinking with the graduate students in my department Thursday evening, as I sat at a posh restaurant outside of Sacramento with a huge "mar-tea-ni" in front of me. Two nights in a row of heading out for drinks puts me in the category of a "party girl." Well, that plus the fact that I had been living in Iceland, where he had heard the only thing to do in the winter time was "get drunk and have sex." I neglected to ask him where he had heard that bit of branding because of course it is rather counter to what we say in my field: "Icelanders preserved the sagas because there was nothing else to do during the long cold winter nights but tell each other stories."
It was more that bookish side of Iceland, rather than the party scene side of Iceland, with which I was identified by my colleague in the department on Thursday evening. His name is Dean, and he is considered the wunderkind of the department, since he got through the program rather quickly (already has the PhD and is thus Dr. Dean) and was always good at articulating his points in class discussion. He is heading off to teach in Portland in the fall, and, somewhat to his surprise, has been asked to teach, amongst other things, a class on the Vikings. His dissertation is on Hamsun, and although he did the mandatory year of Old Norse, he is decidedly a modernist. So these days Dean is asking me a lot about the Vikings, and, if I do not compliment myself too much, I saw a genuine look of admiration when Dean got around to mentioning "my book." (Fitzhugh and Ward, eds. Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga. Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000). He even said with some awe that I am the only graduate student to have already published a book. So perhaps that is the impression he has of me, that I am the wunderkind of the department.
But of course as everyone knows, you need to publish more than one book for it to be anything impressive. Preferably a book a year, or even two books in one year.
It was more that bookish side of Iceland, rather than the party scene side of Iceland, with which I was identified by my colleague in the department on Thursday evening. His name is Dean, and he is considered the wunderkind of the department, since he got through the program rather quickly (already has the PhD and is thus Dr. Dean) and was always good at articulating his points in class discussion. He is heading off to teach in Portland in the fall, and, somewhat to his surprise, has been asked to teach, amongst other things, a class on the Vikings. His dissertation is on Hamsun, and although he did the mandatory year of Old Norse, he is decidedly a modernist. So these days Dean is asking me a lot about the Vikings, and, if I do not compliment myself too much, I saw a genuine look of admiration when Dean got around to mentioning "my book." (Fitzhugh and Ward, eds. Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga. Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000). He even said with some awe that I am the only graduate student to have already published a book. So perhaps that is the impression he has of me, that I am the wunderkind of the department.
But of course as everyone knows, you need to publish more than one book for it to be anything impressive. Preferably a book a year, or even two books in one year.
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