Bek has handed it in!!!

Bek has handed it in!!!, originally uploaded by the procrastinatrix.

So I played hooky for an hour to witness a Moment In History - Bek handed in her PhD thesis! It's called "Troubling Spaces: the politics of 'new' community-based guerilla performance in Australia". She looked exhausted, relieved, excited and a bit nuts - but it was SO good to see her.

We were a bit late because her supervisor insisted on measuring all the margins with a ruler - I would have thought by this stage it was too late for that. We headed off up campus with a sense of purpose and then realised we had no idea where we were going. We eventually found the Graduate School and the women in there were really nice. There were another four or five people submitting their theses at the same time, so there was a definite atmosphere of zaniness and accomplishment. Bek was congratulating everyone but nobody else played along...it was like they were all still in their own bubbles of academia and couldn't quite believe they were there.

Either the uni has revised how it treats postgrads or the PhD candidates get a better standard of care than the lowly MA students. My supervisor wasn't even around when I submitted my thesis, nor did he seem to care, and I just handed it in over a counter where some harried admin staffer gave me a receipt and sent me on my way.

I think it's great to be able to share in moments of your friends' lives like this.