Written Comps – Done!

I meant to post something about this over the weekend, but didn’t get around to it. My written comps are done! And I think they went really well!! They definitely went better than I was expecting or fearing they would go. I was pretty much fearing the worst, and was pleasantly surprised when I found that all the questions were pretty much doable (just like Sue told me they would be). There were two questions on which there were a fairly big number of details I either couldn’t remember or flat-out didn’t know, but I was still able to write enough stuff to fill up three pages and one page for those problems respectively. It took me a full eight hours (including a 40-minute lunch break to Subway) to do the five problems (okay, technically six, but one was a “10-minute” follow-up question of sorts), and I was pretty much writing the entire time; there was not much time spent staring at the desk. I took the whole exam with wet feet too, because it was pouring for my entire half-hour walk into campus in the morning, and also when I went to lunch. It was raining so hard that it didn’t matter whether or not I had an umbrella, as my shoes were getting soaked from the raindrops splashing off the pavement all around me. My shoes didn’t even dry out until the next morning!
But anyway, thank you to all of you who were praying for me or encouraged me. I really appreciate it. And most of all I’m thankful to God for making the exam itself go so smoothly, even though I was so stressed out leading up to it. Even though I still have my oral comps presentation and oral comps exam coming up on Friday, I feel like I’m past the hardest part. My attitude now is so much more positive than it was before the written exam, Alex and other people basically said it’s like night and day in talking to me. I feel that night-and-day difference too. I’m even optimistic that my workload in prepping for the oral exam is manageable enough that I might not even have to spend any evenings doing work this week! Now that’s a pretty incredible change! Today I put together a draft of my power point slides for my presentation (basically my GMU talk but with a much-beefed up intro and ending), and the next three days I should be able to focus primarily on looking up and learning the information that I didn’t know on the written exam, so that I can have answers when they re-ask me during the oral exam.
Also in the stress-reducing department, I’ve now gotten my plans pretty much figured out for the rest of the month, like how/when I’m getting back to Wisconsin, but more on that in a later post. For now though, it’s bedtime.
Oh, and Happy 23rd Birthday, Alex!