I suppose this post is overdue, as I know there are people still waiting to hear. The notification of selections for Ph.D. positions in Uppsala and Stockholm were made on Wednesday, and I did, in fact, get a position at “my” university, Uppsala University. I’ll be working on the country house project, examining economic and cultural conditions of the clergy in relation to country estates on Sweden in the early modern period. The other position in Uppsala went to my school bestie, Astrid, and the fact that we’ll be working together for at least another four years is the icing on the cake. The whole thing is really a dream come true for me, and I can’t quite believe yet that it’s real. I have my first meeting with my supervisors on January 13, and I’m sure it will start feeling more real then.

I know it’s a little gauche to toot my own horn like I’m about to, but I suppose my own blog is a reasonably appropriate place to do it. Not only did I place highest among the applicants for the position I was offered (a group that, in the spirit of full disclosure, I’ll acknowledge included only three other applicants), I also placed second in a pool of 45 applicants for the non-project positions in Uppsala and Stockholm. That fact still blows my mind, particularly when I recall how uncertain I felt about my abilities in the first year of my master’s program. It took me a long time to stop feeling like I was swimming ridiculously out of my depth and, to tell the truth, I still don’t think I’ve got over that feeling entirely.