Why I hate French sociologists

I will NOT be making an overseas trip this summer, and it's all because of this guy.

I'm taking a Social Theory class this term, which is actually a Bourdieu class. This is the fifth class I've taken during my PhD; I was only required to take 4 to meet my institutional requirement. Still, my advisory committee thought it was a good idea for me to take the class, in order to give me some exposure to social theory. Taking a class exclusively about Bourdieu doesn't really give me real exposure to "social theory", but whatever. I agreed to take the class.

(I have now taken 1 social theory class and 0 historiography classes in my PhD. I am allegedly doing a degree in history. Makes total sense.)

Anyway, Bourdieu has taken up enough of my time this semester that I haven't been able to study for comps... at all. It became evident that writing comps in June would have been suicidal. So now I'm writing comps in September, which means that I'll be studying for them over the summer. Which means I'm not going overseas anymore.

Initially, I was absolutely devastated. But I've known this for about three weeks now, so I've begun looking on the brightside. Clearly, I'll be using this summer to discover the surrounding area a little. There's no excuse to not go to the Stratford Festival. I could see myself discovering some Lake Huron beach towns. I'll probably head to Hamilton for the first time (Mustard Festival?). I almost guarantee that I'll be tagging along to Oshawa with my roommate at some point. A proper trip to Windsor and Point Pelee is almost definitely on the cards. I'll definitely head to Montreal at some point, I've never actually been to any of the thousand summer festivals there.

And I can go further afield too! I can guarantee that I'll go do a Western Canada trip to see my sister in Calgary and miscellaneous other friends in Alberta and B.C. Perhaps I should go to Calgary for Stampede? And I'll probably throw in a US trip too, since this summer seems like an opportune time to finally go to Chicago and Detroit.

Any who knows where else? At least it won't be an uneventful summer.