Today was an important day for me personally.  Mount St. Mary's University Graduate Division held its Graduate Student Forum and Reception for us master's students that are graduating.  It is a symbolic event that we made it and have officially graduated.  It was good to see the deans, Dr. Linda Moody and Dr. Millie Kidd.  They've been so nice to me and supportive the entire time.  But it was especially nice to see my thesis adviser, Dr. Monseratt Reguant. Thank God for her help.

Each of the grad students spoke about their thesis topics and for some reason I spoke of the process involved of writing the paper and not so much on the subject of the thesis. The thing about writing the paper is that one is very much alone throughout the entire process and one doesn't really engage the adviser until there is something substantially written. The reality is that everyone is so busy, and only when there is something concrete to work with is it worth it for all involved.

But I talked about how the concept of my topic evolved out of a travel study trip to China and my subsequent visit to Macau.  I talked about how I was fortunate to have taken a class with Dr. Jennifer Tran-Smith who at the time had just completed her Ph.D. at UCLA.  Her insights helped me tremendously and I hope to cross paths with her in the future to thank her personally.

Everyone I spoke to encouraged me to continue on in this subject area.  Dr. Jane Crawford even said I have a potential Ph.D. dissertation topic.

I do have some ideas of which way I'd like to go next. But just grateful to have reached this one goal successfully.

If anyone is interested a few weeks ago I added to the Juan Fernandez Wikipedia page that already existed.  However, the only entry was a blurb from Catholic Encyclopedia written in 1913.  Click link.  Brother Juan Fernandez