I passed!

[asterroc]

Realized I updated lots of other places but not here. I passed my quals!

Next step is my thesis proposal, called prelims here.

Originally posted on Dreamwidth. comments there. Comment here or there.

Comments

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Oh definitely. I will never again in my life have another test that's as high stakes as this. Prelims and thesis defense aren't going to be nearly as bad.

Also for added angst / vindication, this's the point at which I either was kick-banned or rage quit last time, depending on how I feel like describing it on a given day.

[sildra.livejournal.com]

My parents said that in their program the quals were trivial and the prelims were the worst (using the nomenclature that seems to be common between your program and mine--I forget what they were called in my parents' program). Which is even worse, because you've put in a couple extra years at that point, and then to have to fear washing out... Apparently there were three possible outcomes, depending on how you did: washing out entirely, being awarded a terminal Masters and shown the door, and advancing to candidacy.

And then there's a piece of a letter my grandmother once wrote to me about how precarious grad school was in her day, when I wrote to tell her that I'd passed my prelims:

"Your letter was charming. When reading it I seesawed between "yes, that's how it was in my orals" and "how astonishingly different from my department." The most striking difference was one you tucked into the narrative without emphasis: that you didn't embarrass your advisor. This implies that he and you were on the same team; that you belonged with him; that he cared about how well you did. And in my department, when I was at Harvard, we students had no such two-way relations. Yes, we'd have felt embarrassed if our advisor made a mess of things, but if one of us made a mess we'd just be quietly dropped - without the advisor's embarrassment.

It seems a protective environment academically, but not at all protective socially - you're on your own for living arrangements and discussion groups and such. But the comparison of our doings is at such a different time as well as a different place. "

(That last bit refers to how it one of the things my grandmother continually found most shocking and difficult to take in about my graduate program was that the school did not provide me with a dorm room and served meals. Even though that didn't happen when my mother and her siblings were in grad school, either (although my aunt went to the same school as me and was in a co-op while she was there, which was dorm-like and did have served meals, but was not affiliated with the school, so that might have confused my grandmother).)