Written Comps – In the Morning

And the day I’ve been dreading for months is almost here. In the morning I’ll wake up, walk into campus, and take my written PhD comprehensive exam. I’m scheduled to start at 9am, and I have eight hours (plus a lunch break to take a walk and rest my hand) in which to finish questions from each of my five committee members (Sue, Dave, Joel, Marcelo & Derrick). I really have no idea what to expect. I’ve been reading/studying a bunch of stuff over the last two weeks, with varying degrees of success, focus and also frustration. Basically, I’ve been going crazy, and am very tired of feeling the need to cloister myself away from friends and fun, or even just normal life. I just hope and pray I’ve been studying the right things, and that I’ll be able to recall the right things at the right times tomorrow. My advisor Sue told me today that she thinks all of the questions are doable, and that she thinks I’ll have no problem finishing them in under 8 hours. The question is, how much do/should I believe her? I guess I’ll find out tomorrow if her confidence in my abilities is well-deserved or not. Right now I think everyone else is more confident than me about how I’ll do on this thing, but I guess that’s normal, right? She also told me this afternoon that she had to retype her question, because she decided that her original question was too hard. I was sure to tell her thank you for that. 🙂
In any case, once the written exam’s done, then at least I’ll have some solid parameters about what to study for next Friday’s oral PhD comprehensive exam, because during the oral exam I’ll need to re-answer questions from the written exam that I goofed up or flat-out didn’t know. As challenging or nerve-wracking as that might be, I feel like that’ll be easier to prepare for than this written exam. I can’t wait for this to be over. I want my life back.