30 Days {or more)

Some of the biggest new around here is that Matt passed his COMPS! Woohoo!

 

This is a BIG, GINORMOUS deal. After completing 55 hours of coursework in Ph.D. school comes COMPS. It's 3-4 big questions that you have to research and write about and have references for and you do this pretty much without any help.

 

And, you have 30 days to do it. That's it. 30 days. And during this 30 days, Matt changed jobs and we started school -- and he was teaching a class at JBU. So, yes, he was crazy busy. He turned his COMPS in on September 3rd. The professors grade them and review them and it's supposed to take about 2 weeks but in Matt's case it took a month. So on October 3rd he met with this COMPS committee (the 4 professors that gave him the questions). He did a presentation that basically went over his research and what he wrote about. Then, they talked to him and sent him out of the room. He was prepared to have to do some revision on his papers. But, when they called him back in, they said he passed -- no revisions needed! It was a HUGE relief! All that hard work and nights with little sleep paid off.

 

You have to pass COMPS to get to officially become a doctorial candidate. Matt got the confirmation email the next week that he'd been added to the list of doctorial candidates.

 

After all the excitement of passing, the next few days were stressful and tough. Without going into all of it, let me just say that Matt's advisor (also on his comps and dissertation committees) overstepped her professional bounds. When Matt drew the line and said that he couldn't do what she was asking, she dropped him as his advisor. Thankfully, he found another advisor willing to take him on (it's kinda a big deal to change advisors this late) and is moving forward. And, his old advisor and Matt are on good terms now (and her behavior was dealt with -- thankfully Matt was able to stay out of all of that!).

 

However, the bad news is that Matt lost some very precious time. And, as of now, he has to turn out 3 chapters in the next 3 weeks if he wants to stay on track to graduate in May. Otherwise it's another year. So, we are truly just trying to get to Thanksgiving break! It's going to be a very tough few weeks for us, but we will survive as we have before -- it's nothing new on this Ph.D. journey -- and let me tell you we are gonna celebrate big when he is done!!