TGIO

Thank God It's Over
Just today I passed my oral exams. whew! I cannot image what it was like to have to retake either the written exams or the oral exams (there were students in our group who had to do both).

Thank God! Now to the dissertation part...

Written Exams DONE!

No one prepared me for the exhaustive time of completing the written exams. I am beat. Now to sweat to see if I can sit for oral exams, and to study for them. I am not sure that I have the physical stamina for all this.

Comprehensive Exams - Part I

Regardless of the number of times, the different ways, or the various people we asked, no one prepared us for the emotional toll of the comprehensive exams. Our small group asked the students who were one year ahead of us and received snarls and nasty faces -- I guess the impression that we were to get was that it was distasteful. The testing professors gave us the sage advice of study as you did for your finals, that should work. Then the week prior to the exams, the lead professor advised each of us that 10 hours of studying a day was not going to be enough!!!! By that time, I was no where near 10 hours of studying a day - more like eight hours, if I was lucky. I did take 6 days of vacation time off to study, but I should have taken more.

After the exams, subsets of our small group got together to see if we could recall the individual questions, in case we had to go into 'rewrites' for the exams, which was my personal goal and the goal of a couple of others. Our goal of getting to the 'rewrite' level was based on the discussion of the other professors that nearly no other student that they could recall would pass the exams -- many have failed, and if you are lucky, you would get to the 'rewrite' stage.

So we gathered together to see if we could recall the questions and discuss our answers -- what a drama we started among other students and the professors -- story best left to after completion of this entire process.

So we started studying together until a month later when we received notification of our scores -- and a paragraph requiring our signature stating that we would not discuss the exam with other students -- now or ever -- which is probably why the older students would / could not give us any information on what was on the exam.

For some insane reason, I felt as if I had possibly passed one or more of the four comprehensive exams -- not one! So, I am in rewrite mode for all four exams. I did complete one rewrite and received word that I am ready for orals for that one. I am dragging my feet on the other three -- three instructors with three different approaches to the rewrites, all different and only one instructor has been my classroom instructor, so I am unsure what they want.

So, that is the reason for the lapse between posts, and there may be another lapse until I complete the other three rewrites. O yea, and I am launching a new business in the midst of this as I am working full-time and my only daughter is getting married in four months.

Parts II and beyond to come later.

Focus on the Finish

We are a small community of PhD candidates, each with our own individual personalities and perspectives. Yet we all have the same goal of completing our degree.

Sometimes the focus is stronger at different times. For instance, my focus is there, somewhere, after full-time work, family responsibilities, and planning. It's there, but sometimes it gets buried.

Some people have our educational goal first in their lives all the time. God bless them. I just can't (or maybe won't) do that in my life right now. I don't bemoan them their decision of priorities and I hope that they don't belittle me because of my priorities.

Different perspectives.

A Little Encouragement Goes a Long Way

Although I am still waiting the results of the written exam, I decided to go out on a limb and apply for the six-month sabbatical that is offered at my work. It is an incredible opportunity - they pay for your salary for six months while you work full-time on your dissertation! You can also choose to work half-time for 12 months and get full-time pay. It seems as if I could concentrate better working full-time on my dissertation.

I was thinking about taking the sabbatical soon (like next month or so!), but it turns out that you need to apply in March for decision to be made in June for the next year. My request is to start the sabbatical ten months from now.

With the state of the economy and the overload that everyone is carrying at work, I filled out the request thinking that the paper would be shuffled from one place to another. Imagine my surprise when I received a personal letter from our company President commending me on my work and letting me know that he supported my request! He did add that the economy would make a difference and I still am unsure if I will receive it or not, but what a ray of sunshine that brought to my day!

I do hope that I receive it!

Read Some More

Studying for, and then taking the comprehensive exams took a lot of time. I am still unsure how I did with the exams, and still studying for possible rewrites and then orals, if lucky.

However, after taking a couple of days to rebalance, I find a backlog of things that need to be done -- annual taxes, husband's bookkeeping, other obligations that I have set aside for a couple of months like volunteer research.

On top of that, I am setting my goals for 2009, one of which is to enjoy cooking more -- interestingly, I am practicing what I preach to my math students -- change in attitude. I am saying to myself that "I enjoy cooking", I agree that it takes time to cook well (just like math), "I am a good cook", "Others know that I am a good cook". My family has noticed a major difference.

And then there is the extra reading. There doesn't seem as if there is enough time in the day, but I know that there is. It's always a matter of balance.

Speaking of which, I am running out of time today, so I will return later to write more.

Concept Paper is NOT a Proposal Paper

I thought that I would be ahead of the curve in creating an extended concept paper that was close to a proposal paper. Turns out that isn't a good idea. It always go back to consider the audience -- the audience for the concept paper is a possible committee of faculty who may serve on your dissertation committee. They only want an overview and two pages is maximum. So my goal this weekend is to drop five pages out of my concept paper. However, I think that I will keep the original that I created this weekend as my final version proposal paper will look alot like what I wrote for this week.

Balance in your life is going to be a lot of keeping sane during this process. I am lucky that I am able to compartmentalize my life among my spirituality, my spouse, my job, my children, and all these silly extras that I take on. I am blessed.