That Ph.D. feeling

I lodged the final copy of my thesis for the library on Tuesday, which finally brings the whole to-ing and fro-ing process to an end. I'll probably graduate in August, but the list of dates hasn't been sent through yet. This puts me in mind of the feeling I had when I submitted the thesis at the end of August 2009. My desk was piled high with library books and all manner of papers -- it had well and truly become an archeological project! I even had a subsidiary pile growing on the floor, in a bid to keep personal books and library books apart. Nothing in the process of amendment and final submission involved piling the books and papers to the same heights. My thesis looked at the development of the music courses at the University of Melbourne up to around 1914. My choice of subject was driven by a deep curiosity about the history of the content of the music degree courses, which came to include practical studies as a graduation elective after 1904. There is a rich vein of historical writing about the University Conservatorium (established 1895, but known as the Faculty of the Victorian College of the Arts and Music since 2009), but little has been done on the contents of the courses taught in the institution. It was an engrossing subject, although I'm trying to think about it as little as humanly possible at the moment. Because I started my candidature before the University of Melbourne started maintaining a consistent digital archive of recent theses, you won't find my dissertation on the web. There is some prospect of turning it into a book, but that's a while off. So...here it is. I had it bound in lilac, which is the colour of the music degree at Melbourne University.