I Am Legend

After a stressful and extended wait, I finally heard. I passed my Public Finance field exam. That's right. I officially completed the gauntlet: 4 Comprehensive exams in 9 months. From the day I sat for the Micro on the morning of September 13th up to the moment I left the Public Finance exam on the sunny afternoon of May 16th, I did nothing but study. Oh, and I broke my ankle, got engaged, planned a wedding, bought a condo, and beat off a lot. Regardless, they are done early, my Independant Study course is now approved, meaning my thesis research is officially underway, and I just need to skate by with 4 Bs in my upcoming classes to get my M.Phil, and hopefully I can bang out my thesis from the research topics in my IS this fall. Neat. My ambitious goal to crank out my Ph.D in three and a half years is still a possibility, more in reach than ever, I suppose (though I still expect it to be 4 years, for what it's worth).

Note: I do not mean this to sound like bragging or gloating, but rather just want to express that I feel so incredibly relieved. The saga of getting my results were longer than any of the other field exams, unfortunately. Those who took other exams on the same day had all heard back several weeks ago. In most cases, their respective professors had encouraged them to take the exams and offered support of their efforts and had other students to study with, whereas I was told by my prof that he did not think any of the students were poised to do well with the relatively short turn-around time between the semester and the exam (note: 1 day). Since I was the only one taking it, each passing day made me more and more paranoid, questioning whether being the only one taking the test was working against me as having no basis for comparison on the results, remembering each little mistake, fearing that the burn-out of a year jamming my brain with every and anything I could cram in there took its toll. By the time the sign-up form for the fall round of field exams found my inbox, still not having heard my results, panic really started to take its tithe. In fact, just putting the experience into words made my stomach drop, my shoulders tighten, and my fight-or-flight response kick in. For those of you that know me, especially how I tend not to worry about these things, you can see that I was freaking out. Hence the relief. Thank God.

Also Note: Title of the post is a reference, in case nobody picked it up. Suppossed to be a cool book that I probably should have read as a dorky teenager, and it now is being turned into a movie (for the 3rd time) with Will Smith as Vincent Price/Charlton Heston (i.e. the human).

Coffee time!