Days 0 and 1 of My Comps Experience
Ultimately, I got my much anticipated e-mail at 9:36pm on Monday. This was after I had taken the dog out and decided to go to bed, but still had enough hope to give the old e-mail one last check before night-night.
And it was there.
I wanted to read all of the questions before I went to sleep but knew that was not going to happen. My brain kept flitting about the electronic page from one line to one below, to one above at random. I forced myself (with a will of iron) to read two questions. Given the oddity of my brain state, they were questions number 10 and 8. Ten I began scribbling away a number of questions to consider and key points I would like to make.
Number 8? I laughed at 8. It involves correcting a major personnel problem in our field. If I had the means or theory of how to do that, someone should hire me right now to be in charge of their training program. Like NOW. Before I graduate. But after I turn in my awesome answer.
Other aspects of number 8 concern things that are relevant to the topic but were never covered in class. There are resources out there.... it's just.... I feel like this is one thing that *should* have been covered in class.
Anyway, day 1 was spent working on a number of things unrelated to my comps. I had to submit my reimbursement form for my recent trip. I needed to finish and turn in a project that I got an extension for due to my trip. Oh and I had to, HAD TO, fill out a form for my funding for next semester. I think that there is an important lesson here, kids: DON'T TAKE A TRIP RIGHT BEFORE COMPREHENSIVE EXAMS. You wind up doing too much catching up during your comps time.
The plus side, I did spend all afternoon working on my comps. I some really important legal resources for question ten. It was kinda awesome. The federal documents happened to be stored right in my campus library. The call numbers for gov docs are a little weird, but I figured out the system really fast. And then I patted myself on the back for learning something new! (squee) I also checked out ~8 books for the other questions. Then I went home, ate dinner out with a friend, hit my head on the plastic rod of my vertical blinds, got a headache and called it a night. I should have worked more, but headache = no thinky. I still ended up thinking (excessively) about some of the questions and ended up pulling a thin book out when my headache lessened. But there was no evening writing. No small or electronic print either! (and lots of puppy cuddles)
And it was there.
I wanted to read all of the questions before I went to sleep but knew that was not going to happen. My brain kept flitting about the electronic page from one line to one below, to one above at random. I forced myself (with a will of iron) to read two questions. Given the oddity of my brain state, they were questions number 10 and 8. Ten I began scribbling away a number of questions to consider and key points I would like to make.
Number 8? I laughed at 8. It involves correcting a major personnel problem in our field. If I had the means or theory of how to do that, someone should hire me right now to be in charge of their training program. Like NOW. Before I graduate. But after I turn in my awesome answer.
Other aspects of number 8 concern things that are relevant to the topic but were never covered in class. There are resources out there.... it's just.... I feel like this is one thing that *should* have been covered in class.
Anyway, day 1 was spent working on a number of things unrelated to my comps. I had to submit my reimbursement form for my recent trip. I needed to finish and turn in a project that I got an extension for due to my trip. Oh and I had to, HAD TO, fill out a form for my funding for next semester. I think that there is an important lesson here, kids: DON'T TAKE A TRIP RIGHT BEFORE COMPREHENSIVE EXAMS. You wind up doing too much catching up during your comps time.
The plus side, I did spend all afternoon working on my comps. I some really important legal resources for question ten. It was kinda awesome. The federal documents happened to be stored right in my campus library. The call numbers for gov docs are a little weird, but I figured out the system really fast. And then I patted myself on the back for learning something new! (squee) I also checked out ~8 books for the other questions. Then I went home, ate dinner out with a friend, hit my head on the plastic rod of my vertical blinds, got a headache and called it a night. I should have worked more, but headache = no thinky. I still ended up thinking (excessively) about some of the questions and ended up pulling a thin book out when my headache lessened. But there was no evening writing. No small or electronic print either! (and lots of puppy cuddles)