It's official... I have too many books.

Last April I was delighted and surprised to have been awarded the UCLA Library's Campbell Student Book Collection Award, receiving the First Prize among Graduate Students. I had seen the signs for the competition around the library and thought that it would be amusing to enter my little library of Californiana, mostly acquired through the severe misfortune of having lived in close proximity to several excellent bookstores over the past few years.

In all honesty, I entered the competition with very little intention of winning. Instead, I found it a useful excuse to go through what I had collected and to see what academic direction they suggested, a topic I was thoroughly struggling with that second quarter of grad school. After making an annotated bibliography of my favorite books on the state I then composed a short essay on the collection's theme. I ended up titling the collection "Imagined California: A Pastiche of Places."

According to the judges, my collection proved that I was "a true bibliophile." Who'd have thought? Well, maybe the kind friends who have lent their hand hauling boxes of books each time I've had to move, but certainly not me. I never bought these books thinking that I was amassing a collection, nor did I think that I would be judged for my bibliophilic tendencies (sounds dangerous, doesn't it?). That said, I am grateful for the prize, without which I would not have been able to afford my fabulous trip to Australia this summer.

But more importantly, I'm truly thankful that this competition forced me to sit down and really reckon with what I care most about and why I'm in grad school. Since then, I've already applied this revelation to two papers, both of which are among the best I've written and may even signal some directions I might head to find a dissertation topic. Even more exciting than that, I plan to take these topics out of my academics and into a more engaging and exciting writing style. As soon as I can, I want to sit down and start writing about this state like I mean it, and once I have something worth sharing, you'll be sure to see it here.

Take it away, Jolie: