Bittersweet

Two years, 45 annotations, two short critical papers, three 20-page essays, a teaching practicum, and one 88,000-word novel. Done.

From my last annotation (a three-page paper on one particular aspect of a book), Isabella Bird's Six Months in the Sandwich Islands, written in 1873 (think Jane Austen on a pirate ship):

“Whenever I look up from my writing, I ask, Was there ever such green? Was there ever such sunshine? Was there ever such an atmosphere? Was there ever such an adventure? And Nature – for I have no other companion, and wish for none – answers, ‘No.’”