Our court shall be a little academe,
Still and contemplative in living art.
(Love's Labour's Lost; Act 1, Scene 1)
It has been a week and it still doesn't feel real. Like many students this year my academics were flipped on their heads due to the pandemic. I left England in March to continue my studies back in Illinois, somehow completing a dissertation when many of the research libraries in the world were closed. But libraries are magical places and some were still working to provide material to us desperate students searching for obscure books. Shout out to the Duluth Public Library for sending me scans from Frederic W. Ness's book The Use of Rhyme in Shakespeare's Plays, printed in 1941. We learn to adapt, the in-person workshops I wanted to host where shifted online, and I can't thank my participants enough for their willingness to learn and try something new through a virtual format. Without their help, my paper would have been quite boring. Even in a world functioning under social distancing, there are still ways we are brought together. So I handed in my dissertation in September and waited patiently to receive my grade, waiting even more patiently for graduation day, and am still waiting patiently to receive my official diploma in the mail. Graduation Day Due to the time difference between Illinois and England, I had to get up at 5:00 am to celebrate, but it was so worth it! Even though a virtual graduation isn't the same, it was still fun to share the accomplishment with all my fellow classmates! The Shakespeare Institute made the occasion celebratory by having special guest offer their congratulations, such as Simon Russell Beale, Kenneth Branagh, Peter Holland, and Marjorie Garber, just to name a few. By the time our ceremony came to an end, it felt like one journey had come to fruition and another one was just beginning.
