Come Together

At long last, my thesis committee is together! It's taken a while, much longer that it probably should have, to get to this point, but at least I've finally done it.

Now I need to set up the date for my proposal defense, finish my ethics paperwork tomorrow, and get going on my research. Hooray!

Things I can cross off of my grad school check list

I can officially place passing my comprehensive exams into that list! Thank God, and my insane BSing abilities, for that!

Comprehensive exams, for those unfamiliar with them, are, at this particular university department, three tests, three hours long each taken on three consecutive days. Anthropological theory and two other qualifying courses, generally in sub fields like medical, physical, or archaeology. It sucks. It's an extremely draining experience. One I'm glad I won't have to repeat until I have to take comps for a Ph.D. program. The only saving grace was that we were given the questions in advance and weren't completely blindsided by what was asked. One of the questions through me for a loop because of the wording on the sample question did not make it clear that we were going to have to discuss another book besides the two ethnographies that we were supposed to analyze. Hence my reference to BSing!

Of course, the powers-that-be had to ruin my Valentine's day, as the comps were given the 13-15 of February. Thankfully, I did get to see my Valentine and he was sweet enough to go grocery shopping for me. He also bought tons of candy. This is the third less than stellar Valentine's day that we've had together thanks to school. At least our first Valentine's day together was nice and we've always been able to celebrate our anniversary without too much interference from school.

Now I can recycle all of the class handouts, the outlines I created for the comps and other materials involving these classes knowing that I don't need them! It'll be nice to cut the piles of school stuff in half and streamline what I do have a bit precisely. It also helps that I took about 10 books back to the library today. I'll have to take a picture of how tall this stack of paper will end up being.

Hard Work

It has been a while since I have posted anything here. Shame on me! But I do have some good news and progress to report!

I took my comprehensive exams last week. This is one of those situations where the "no news is good news" rule applies. It's still nerve wracking, but I'm feeling better about those papers right now.

This month, I've turned in an annotated bibliography for my proposal and the first draft of my proposal, which I just got back today. My thesis chair said that there's some organizational issues with it, and some things that need clarification, which I will expand upon when I don't feel like I need an IV drip of caffeine! But the questions that I want to ask are very good and she thinks that this will end up being a very interesting project. I've worked on the second draft some already and checked out a book for the library that she recommended. I was extremely nervous when I was writing the first draft, especially since I've never done anything like this before and didn't know what to expect! I really hope that I can publish a few articles in journals with the work I have done for my thesis!

It's just good to know that I'm going in the right direction and that all of this stress and hard work is paying off. The fruit of my labor (i.e. reading until my eyeballs practically fall out of my head the the perpetual noise of the keyboard) is beginning to flower. It's one hurdle that I have successfully jumped with plenty more to go. Writing a thesis is like running a marathon!

Everything is coming together! All of the uncertainty, the stress, the insane amount of coffee/energy drinks, nervousness, hard work, and worry are finally paying off! Right now I'm extremely tired and ridiculously giddy! Now I have to use these positive, happy feelings and thoughts to get me through the rest of the day! I've got two books I'm in the middle of reading for my thesis and two more than I need to start soon.