f13.net

I am now finished with my written comprehensive exams. Total of 17 hours and 51 pages between the two sessions. I have a good feeling that I at least squeaked by with a pass and don't even have to set up my oral defense for another month.  This was more brutal than the god damned bar exam.

So I can now play the 360 that I bought a month ago (because I got a screaming deal) that has been sitting on my shelf taunting me the entire time.

Yippee!  :rock:  :woot: :yahoo: :thumbs_up:

Dude, grats.

Thanks. I got Bioshock and the Orange Box with my deal. I also want to try to track down GHIII somewhere tomorrow. So as a gubmint employee now I have a nice 3 day weekend and an embarrassment of gaming goodness.

Congratulations! After the hell that was bar studying, I can't imagine how much worse this next level was.  Spend the weekend in the true American way- complete sloth.

That's the plan. Mucho alcoholo, 360 and a Utes home game.

Wow!  Congrats!  Have boobies!  (http://www.democraticwarrior.com/forum/images/smilies/37840bouncyblondegirlnk9.gif)

Outstanding sir.  Congratulations and welcome to the "Secret Handshake" club.

Congrats Abogadro!

Thanks.

Not quite there yet though. I'm pert near ABD but still have a ways to go to get the full Piled High and Deeper.

The correct term is "Post hole Digger". 

Heh. Awesome.

Congratulations.

A winner is you!

So what can you do now?

Two things: Work a job for half the pay of a master's degree and wear really expensive sandals with socks on. 

Well done sir!

In celebration,  I would personally like to see an "Unfrozed Caveman PHD" grief title.

Congratz man :)

There are so many smart people around here.  It's very annoying.

It's better to be lucky than good.

:awesome_for_real:

Also congratulations on the gubmint job.

Grats.

Get Orange Box for PC and play TF2 with us.

Congorats. Go play the fuck out of something. :awesome_for_real:

Your racism or spelling is frightening.

You must never have played EQ.

I did and I'm afraid to consider where you are going with that.

Awesomesauce.

Care to explain for those of us who don't know, what your exam was actually for? So I can render appropriate congratulations, of course.

Congorats was a pretty common way that people screwed around with the usual ding gratz pat on the back crap.

That your mind jumped to racism was pretty interesting though.

It's an intermediary but rather painful step towards getting a Ph.D. After all your coursework you have to take comprehensive written exams that test your knowledge of the field. It varies by program, but I had to take one in my major area and one in my minor. They are all-day written exams. I answered a total of 6 questions over the course of two days and 51 pages.  It is a pain to both read all of the stuff, get familiar with it and keep it in your memory and also a rather grueling exercise in just taking the tests. Assuming I passed I will have an oral defense of my answers before my advisory committee and then move onto the dissertation phase.  Once you pass comps you are known as ABD (all but dissertation) and can often teach your own courses while you work on the dissertation (although I likely won't be doing that because of my current full time gig).

Congratulations, sounds like quite the task. I wonder if they make allowances for people who've spent their whole lives writing on computers and not by hand.

What is your field if you don't mind sharing?

Writing 51 pages by hand insures that no one will read it.

Seriously. Who the fuck would make someone do that.

It's sick.

That's not TOO bad if those 51 pages are old-school Blue Books. That probably translates to 20 real pages, max.

It's typed. My hand couldn't possibly take that must writing.

So, 51 pages typed. More liek 2 handwritten college-rule single-spaced pages, amirite?

Still, congrats, it sounds like literary water boarding.

Congratulations, Abagadro, and good luck on the defense.

I've been on a number of PhD committees and have written questions for a number of prelims.  My take on the whole thing is that it's largely used a) to weed out students that don't really want to be there and b) to remind students that while they have learned a lot, that they will still study for the rest of their lives only to end up still feeling stupid.  Most of these prelims are just an exercise in hazing (I had it done to me, now I'm going to do it to you) without much thought going into the reasoning nor assessing the outcome.  For the large part, I think prelims are a worthless exercise that takes valuable research time away from the students and provides little to prepare graduate students for the real world. 

I'm glad you made it through Ab and I hope that you're on the homestretch. 

Okay, enough of all this edumakation talk-such.  You know, I have a PhD, too!  So does Schild! 

Wait.  What?

Having a bunch of letters after your name doesn't mean that you're smart btw.  It means that you have a high tolerance for bullshit. 

Ah. That's a whole lot more stuff then. I was thinking, "yeah, I wrote 15 pages in 2 hours for my exam, 51 pages over two days isn't tooo bad", but 51 typed pages is much more.

Ding.


Heh, I wrote a 27 page paper in 16 straight hours once.

It was not fun. I cannot imagine doing that for 2 days straight.

I did 25 pages in 4 hours my senior year of college. And it wasn't due the next day!

I can type and think fast.

It was about Ring and Ringu, how Americans scare differently than those little people out east. Lots of psych reference and stuff. It wasn't a good paper and was basically a list of references and differences in the movies that pointed out certain things that affect the psyche.

I probably could have made a book out of it. In fact, my professor told me to. I didn't.

I had to do the research on the fly as well. I didn't like the paper at all, but it got me an A- for my senior seminar class.

I'll take it.

Awesome!  Congrads on putting up with the b.s. to get 'er done!

Never have truer words been spoken.  I was never challenged so much to come up with BS than when I did my masters work compared to the real world.  The real world doesn't care about why the electrons are not lining up in synch 100% of the time, they care whether the idea is markettable and can make them money.

Amusing anecdote time:

Last month I had to do a 1-page handwritten paper on "something related to the course material."  Hooray, quality edumacation!  I don't even want to talk about how stupid most people's papers were.  The course, btw, was about electronics as pertaining to audio gear.  We had soldering lab, and I'll carry the scars with me for the rest of my life.

Shit, when my students finally hit college a 1 page paper on "somthing related to the course material" will go over like you just asked them to remove a testicle with a rusty nail.

I had them do a 5 minute warmup writing - on ANY subject they chose, half a page, they could even write the word "think" for half a page and get a 100, 60% of them didn't pull it off.  Altho, one of the students did put up an amusing piece on how if godzilla had been good, instead of bad, we could send him to Iraq and bring the troops home, I wish I had a  :awesome_for_real: sticker to put on that paper.

Another student was instructed by his teacher to write a one page essay on how much he would be worth if he was a slave, $250 - before he escaped, because he was 'strong like a field lion', but after the dogs caught him he got 'wiped' for being bad, only $150.  I thought it was fucking hilarious when I said for $150 I've got some work around the house that needs done, others not so much.

Ahh, the joys of trying to shape the impressionable minds of urban youths.

WTG.  A very hard road to follow.  Le grats.

Well, found out today that I passed both tests. Time to get drunk...again.

Dude, awesome. Grats ding.

Kick ass man, mad props.

Also, my job is writing 7 papers a biweek.

GRATS2USIR

Yay!  Seriously, congrats!

Just passed my oral defense of the comprehensive exam this afternoon. Nothing like getting grilled by five PhDs with decades of experience to make you feel like a babbling chimp.

HEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY grats

what's left?

Congratulations!  

As someone that gets to do the grilling, I can certainly appreciate how great you must feel to be done with another hoop.  

Congratz!

They made you President? I didn't even know you were in the Order of Succession.

Just follow the "evolution of man" chart:  Caveman comes after monkey.

Congrats man!

Dissertation proposal. Dissertation proposal defense. Dissertation. Dissertation defense.

In other words, about 2 more years if I'm lucky.

bleh

good job anyway!

Crazy PhD system. Here in the UK you start it off with the dissertation proposal, see if anyone will take you and then spend 3 years (full time) researching and hand the thing in to be examined.

I've got some crappy paper to write over christmas about language evolution, not nearly on the same level of intensity though. Grats on passing what sounds like academic hazing.

I bet I could have had a PhD if I had bothered to finish high school!

Anyway, congrats brainy guy!  You pwnt me with your edumacation!

Ya. I've talked to grad students from Europe and they don't even have to go to classes. They just find a prof that will support them and then hand in the thing after disappearing for several years.  Plus its free.