The End of an Era

[braveharte]

I am basically now done with graduate school.  I have a few minor edits to make to the thesis and then it will be official.  It feels very strange to be so close to the end.  Particularly so because I have no clue what employment I have for the fall.  I have prospects, but nothing confirmed.  If nothing else, I can defer graduation and teach here

Comments

[chesh]

Whoa! Go you!
That is, um, pretty fast, isn't it?

It is also so far from where I am now that it blows my mind (just getting ramped up for prequals, myself.)

You rock!

[orbitsquirrel]

Five years is fairly standard for social and hard sciences. If you take much longer employers wonder what you were doing and may frown on it. My undergrad advisor told me once that he considered anything longer than six for a chemistry PhD to mean either you were slacking off or an idiot (in much nicer language).

Other disciplines can, of course, take much longer. I have heard that history for example can take more than nine years to get a PhD.

[braveharte]

Yea my adviser liked to repeatedly tell me stories about a student he had who finished in 3 years and had a baby in the middle of that. I guess that was supposed to motivate me to finish faster. :)

[braveharte]

But I should note... of the 13 people who started the class in my program... I am the first to graduate... an no one else is even close (at least 6 months more and some more like 1+ years).
My adviser blames their advisers.

[chesh]

Three years is ridiculously fast! How does one even manage that what with required classes, research and having some semblance of a life outside of graduate school?

[orbitsquirrel]

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