This weekend is *the* weekend that’s lived in the back (and front) of my mind all semester long. This is the weekend I’ve been putting off all semester–the weekend where I sit down and make concrete my reading list for exams and write out my justification for the special area of study. It’s something I need to get done before leaving for Georgia. I’ll send it off for approval from my committee at the end of the weekend. The past months have been spent depleting precious library resources to order books through various ILL venues. Checking out books like mad. Up to this point, I’ve just been collecting. My apartment is full of teetering stacks of books, piles of printed articles–all waiting to be added or rejected from *the* list (three lists, actually, comp, rhet and the special area, sort of a social class meets political economy meets Marxism). Somewhat surprisingly, I’m looking forward to reading most of this stuff. Whether or not I’ll get through it in the next four months is another story. Really, I’ve been looking forward to this process. It is the perfect process–full of all of my favorite things: books, making lists, strategizing how to find the perfect number of texts, finding texts that match and compliment each other. This is where I flourish. This is what I’m best at. Lists, organization, strategy. This is why I make a good academic. There is nothing I’d rather do with this Saturday. Really.