Victorianitas

In honour of passing my PhD, I fell asleep at a party. A party that some friends threw especially for me. I am either a) getting old, b) getting boring, or c) getting a well-deserved kicking from my sleep-deprived body and mind, and whichever it is I'm glad for friends who don't mind dropping their plans to go out dancing in favour of the much-maligned Quiet Night In. But, still. I have not been the world's best company this week.

In other words, it turns out that passing one's PhD is something of an anticlimax.

At least, it is at first. That's wearing off now, and I'm a much more cheery soul. At first, though, it was days and days of shaky, nerve-jangling jumpiness, punctuated by falling asleep at odd moments. I was warned about this, but since handing in the PhD felt great, and since I've grown tired of hearing people take all the fun out of my PhD-student life - "Ryan Adams is not really your boyfriend" this, "Sweetheart, I don't think your library minion job actually is cover for your espionage work within a black-ops division that may or may not itself be cover for a mercenary organisation obsessed with a fifteenth-century inventor prophet" that - I disregarded the advice and then wondered why I wasn't bouncing over rooftops singing some celebratory song with 'Doctor' featuring prominently in the lyrics.

To the nearly-there, do not be disenchanted: it wears off, it gets better, and writing the damn thing is, on balance, probably all worth it. Just don't expect too much of yourself to start with, and make sure you've got somewhere comfortable to curl up at parties.