Blessings
I want to record two amazing things that happened for us this week. First of all - Conrad needs to do well at his work, because his bosses have a say in whether he stays in his program or not. They gave him a huge data entry assignment to do this, finals week. He was already overloaded with finals papers that he didn't quite have time for, so I volunteered to do the data entry for him, since it was something that didn't require specialized knowledge, just a lot of time. Well, after working on it a couple hours, I came to the realization that there was no way I could get it done in time. In fact, even if I'd worked on it all week I couldn't get it done. Conrad agreed it'd be alright for me to ask for help, so I went on the Secundi forum and posted that I'd give custom Paints to anyone who helped out - I let people know it wouldn't be worth it, but that was as much as I could offer. It was amazing - I think nearly everyone on the forum pitched in. I estimate they dontated over 100 man hours. The project still didn't get 100% done, but it got far enough for the bosses to be ok with it, and it will be entirely finished before the week is out.
The other thing - Conrad was told by people on his committee that his review for candidacy would take place a week after the semester ended, on the 14th. But apparently that wasn't actually their call to make, it's decided by the department secretary, who apparently wanted to do it in about 3 days, on the 7th. Well, Conrad had budgeted his time based on the 14th (i.e. had pulled only 3 all-nighters a week the past month, instead of 5 or 6), and there simply wasn't going to be time to both finish his finals and get the review paperwork in order. He emailed the secretary and let her know the situation, and she replied back that she'd change the date to the 17th - that gives Conrad even more time that he thought he'd have to get his review all in order! We are amazingly happy about that, and feel really really blessed.
The other thing - Conrad was told by people on his committee that his review for candidacy would take place a week after the semester ended, on the 14th. But apparently that wasn't actually their call to make, it's decided by the department secretary, who apparently wanted to do it in about 3 days, on the 7th. Well, Conrad had budgeted his time based on the 14th (i.e. had pulled only 3 all-nighters a week the past month, instead of 5 or 6), and there simply wasn't going to be time to both finish his finals and get the review paperwork in order. He emailed the secretary and let her know the situation, and she replied back that she'd change the date to the 17th - that gives Conrad even more time that he thought he'd have to get his review all in order! We are amazingly happy about that, and feel really really blessed.