Merry Christmas to Me!

I passed the exam.



I can't tell you how relieved I was the minute they told me. I didn't know how much stress I was carrying around until it was gone. It feels so nice to be free of it all, just for a day or two. It's a little hard to stop smiling.

I took the written exam on Tuesday and had my oral this afternoon. The written part was every bit as excruciating as I had thought it would be. I thought three hours would be a long time, but it seemed to go by so quickly and before I knew it I was handing in my paper. I managed to churn out 8 double-spaced pages of my (more or less coherent) thoughts on the progression of geographic influences on the design and production of American decorative arts from 1600 to 1900. I stumbled home (through the snow!) ate some dinner and tried (unsuccessfully) to get to sleep.

Today during the oral part, my professors had a few questions about what I'd written, and then we moved on to the slides. They put up pictures of different objects and I had to talk about them. There were a few where I didn't quite get everything (despite my best efforts, I still have no real idea of how clocks work), but I did pretty well on that part overall. And in a stroke of incredible luck, several things that were in the last few books I read ended up being on the exam. I'm so glad I crammed them in. And cramming is what it felt like -- I really did feel like I had run out of room in my brain. I don't know how I'm going to be able to do this two more times.
So we chatted about andirons and quilts and retablos and Louis Comfort Tiffany's dining room, and then it was over!

And luckily for me, the school holiday party was this evening. It's almost like they threw it just for me. I won't lie, it was really, really nice to get congratulated by everyone. This has felt like a pretty lonely endeavor sometimes, so it was nice to have a social event to cap it off.
Now I'm home in my pjs, cup of cocoa in hand, and I just feel so relaxed. Tonight will be the first night in weeks that I haven't gone to bed worrying about this thing. And tomorrow, I'm going to the library to clear all the books for my exam off of my shelf. That will be a very cathartic experience.

Now that I'm temporarily sane again, hopefully I can be a little more present here on this blog, and in the comments of all of yours. Who knows, I might even show off a little knitting in the days to come. (Wouldn't that be a shock!)