"I should have known something was wrong when my advisor's parting words were Good luck. To his credit, he had--very gently--suggested that I might want to consider a different sort of topic. But I didn't want to consider another topic. I was madly in love with my topic: "Aristocratic Espionage during the Wars with France, 1789- 1815." It had dash, it had swash, it had buckle."