Locating My Grad Carrel

The last week has been quite interesting. I showed up for the first day of my graduate level introductory art history methods class, and it's held in the same room I've been in most of the summer. Hehe. The De Caso Seminar Room at the University of Iowa Art Building West, was paid for by Professor De Caso, who is the mentor of our current director, Dorothy Johnson. His specialty was 19th century art, and he has graciously donated funds to build the room, as well as sent his collection of scholarly materials to the UI. My voluntary position over the summer was as the "collection development specialist" or something along those lines. I am basically in charge of the De Caso books. The first shipment is in the room, stored in the glassed in bookcases along the wall, and I've done a decent job of organizing the materials and arranging a workflow process.
It was funny the first day of class, because there are only 6 people in it, and they are all ta's in the program (besides little ole me). Also that first day our "guest speaker" professor happened to be my own undergrad mentor, with whom I did my honors thesis on the library of Jean de Berri. He was surprised to see me, not knowing that I'd returned to the UI (he'd been on research leave over the summer so never saw me in the building or anything either).
Following the class, he approached me and caught up a bit, and remarked that he'd tell the new grad students he had another resource for them about the area. HAHA. yes, I can tell them were the good places to eat are, and the best places to go for nature moments.
I then joined the colloquim, with the intent to just "sit in and observe" - it was on getting grant monies for dissertations and MA theses, (though hardly anyone pays for an MA thesis), informative yes, in my immediate future, no.
After the talk, the art history department held a reception for the undergrads/grads/and faculty so we could all mingle and introduce ourselves. I was pleasantly surprised and very happy to see that the Undergraduate Art history club still exists. :) :) --This was an organization that I formed with some friends in 2003, because I felt there was a disconnect between the graduate students/undergrads and faculty. The graduates all seemed to have great relationships with the professors, and the undergrads seemed both scared of the grad students (many of them were in fact our TAs at the time) and seemed disillusioned about knowing what you could do with an art history BA, or what was the next step. I am so glad to know that the club is still filling a need and people are still interested in keeping it alive.
The funny thing about my return to the U of Iowa academic arena, is that I'm not technically a graduate student in the department. I am, as of yet, a non-degree seeking student who took a French class and now an art history class. I feel fairly comfortable in the history of art history class though, because I have some training in there from Undergrad...but the higher level of scholarship and forming my "own ideas" about these folks is a little daunting. I'm not saying I take everything at face value - honestly how could I after 5 years of looking at paintings and learning there are different methods to how works are interpreted. Still, I feel sort of as if I am treading water...and if I get to lazy or tired, I might just go under, so I need to stay on top of the reading and get my academic brain back into gear.
I feel so comfortable in the Art Library at Iowa now, and so comfortable with art historical resources, and can even give you the names of scholars in particular fields (especially 19th century haha)
This part of my journey all seems very right, despite last night's small panic over the first presentation and the one page analysis paper I turned in this morning, I think I do truly belong in this realm of discussion of scholars and researching.
The only real drawback is that the school is changing the MA thesis to a requirement for graduation - before it was optional. I'm not adverse to doing the research, as I love reading about art and the interpretations of it, I'm just not sure I"m cut out to give my own ideas on it, sort of the "what qualifies me to say this other than my opinion?" philosophy. I think my mom's thoughts will come back to me many times though, as she was prepping to do a masters thesis in German literature, she sort of realized-her entire bibliography sitting before her-the reading had been fun, but there was no way in hell she wanted to try to put it all into cohesiveness on paper.
Will see if I can overcome the overwhelming desire to follow in her very footsteps.
For now though, the pressure isn't there, and I need to see what the policy is for grad carrels, because if I can get a carrel, I'll feel more official even. Especially since at Indiana, SLIS didnt' have carrrels in the library (it was too small for them) and the FAL's carrels were all reserved by art history masters and phd candidates. Do I really think my full sense of belonging will come from a small glass drawered box to which I have a key? And a nice desktop with a hole for my laptop charger?

Hmmm...yea...I think I kinda do...