Stupid Exam
I’m tired of studying.
Candidacy exams suck. All of my committee members have had me in class, they know me and what I’m capable of. So why do we need to have hours of grilling just to prove that I’m … what? Good enough to be a PhD student? Smart enough? That I won’t embarrass them? They should know all of this already, so what is the point exactly? It seems more like hazing than anything else, just a rite of passage that they make all grad students go through. It’s just lame. Of course, mine will be relatively easy in that my committee only has 2 hours to grill me (I think at Kansas it was more like 4 hours!). Two hours is only double what I did for my masters so from that point of view, it really shouldn’t be too bad. But the idea that they could ask me about anything they feel like asking about is really disconcerting. Therefore, even with less time, the whole process is still lame.
I was fairly calm about the whole thing until about yesterday. Now I’m starting to get really nervous as I start to realize that there is really a ton of stuff that I should know. I have three full days to study left (Friday-Sunday) and I have Monday, but I was hoping to keep that last day as a review day (where I look over the notes I have been taking for the last few weeks). The problem is that I keep realizing that there are other things that are tangentially related to my project that I could be asked that I hadn’t thought about previously. Although I love my project dearly, sometimes I really hate the fact that I have to know such a broad range of things (cell biology, invertebrate biology, systematics, biochemistry, development, biomechanics, statistics, even some physics). And people wonder why I know nothing about vertebrates! There’s just no room in my head for unnecessary knowledge and vertebrate knowledge is completely unnecessary for me (even if I am a vertebrate myself).
It also sucks right now because I should be starting to get together for Japan and I just feel like I can’t right now. I feel like I shouldn’t devote time to anything but studying and TAing right now. So I’m in this weird holding pattern where everything is being scheduled for after the exam which is going to make the first few weeks of May crazy. Who am I kidding, all of May is going to be insane and I should just accept it now. Seriously, this whole year starting in January had just been crazy in many ways. Not bad necessarily, but insanely busy. In any case, I keep telling myself that everything will be better in a week. Even if I’m really busy, it will be such a relief to have this step done (assuming I pass, that is). If I don’t pass, I think I will crawl in a corner and cry for a week. So please God, let me survive the process and pass the stupid thing!
Candidacy exams suck. All of my committee members have had me in class, they know me and what I’m capable of. So why do we need to have hours of grilling just to prove that I’m … what? Good enough to be a PhD student? Smart enough? That I won’t embarrass them? They should know all of this already, so what is the point exactly? It seems more like hazing than anything else, just a rite of passage that they make all grad students go through. It’s just lame. Of course, mine will be relatively easy in that my committee only has 2 hours to grill me (I think at Kansas it was more like 4 hours!). Two hours is only double what I did for my masters so from that point of view, it really shouldn’t be too bad. But the idea that they could ask me about anything they feel like asking about is really disconcerting. Therefore, even with less time, the whole process is still lame.
I was fairly calm about the whole thing until about yesterday. Now I’m starting to get really nervous as I start to realize that there is really a ton of stuff that I should know. I have three full days to study left (Friday-Sunday) and I have Monday, but I was hoping to keep that last day as a review day (where I look over the notes I have been taking for the last few weeks). The problem is that I keep realizing that there are other things that are tangentially related to my project that I could be asked that I hadn’t thought about previously. Although I love my project dearly, sometimes I really hate the fact that I have to know such a broad range of things (cell biology, invertebrate biology, systematics, biochemistry, development, biomechanics, statistics, even some physics). And people wonder why I know nothing about vertebrates! There’s just no room in my head for unnecessary knowledge and vertebrate knowledge is completely unnecessary for me (even if I am a vertebrate myself).
It also sucks right now because I should be starting to get together for Japan and I just feel like I can’t right now. I feel like I shouldn’t devote time to anything but studying and TAing right now. So I’m in this weird holding pattern where everything is being scheduled for after the exam which is going to make the first few weeks of May crazy. Who am I kidding, all of May is going to be insane and I should just accept it now. Seriously, this whole year starting in January had just been crazy in many ways. Not bad necessarily, but insanely busy. In any case, I keep telling myself that everything will be better in a week. Even if I’m really busy, it will be such a relief to have this step done (assuming I pass, that is). If I don’t pass, I think I will crawl in a corner and cry for a week. So please God, let me survive the process and pass the stupid thing!