I passed

I finally heard back from my committee. I passed my written exam conditionally since i have to rewrite one of the answers. It must have been the one i started responding to at about 3am. So i have about a week to revisit that question and submit the answers. Of course now the answer should be a very good answer since i have much more time. But I am happy that i only have to rewrite 1 out of the 9 questions. Now I have to prepare for my oral exam! Which means i really need to get cracking on refining my research proposal. My advisor says i am ready to defend it but i don't feel as confident yet in my approach. So I will work on that in upcoming weeks.

We finally received the grant money that we were waiting for. The government agency that is paying us to do some research needed to wait for the stimulus package to be signed before they could release any funds. Even though they were promised we had to wait to wait about 3 months to receive them. Once the money finally reached my school, it was lost in the mail system for about 30 days. Finally I can get my finances back in order. It was stressful at first and since we weren't getting paid, I wasn't doing any work in that area. Now that we have been paid for the past few months I have some serious catching up to do. I still have to make a serious decision about whether i want to continue to do my own personal research for my dissertation and work on this project on the side, or take some piece of this project and make it my dissertation. Ideally, It would be nice to merge the two somehow.

In other news, my turtle, Nueva Espiranza, swam in the back of the pack for a while, but came up strong at the end and made the final turn to take third place. Not a bad finish since she was holding 2nd to last for a while.

The great turtle race

After looking strong in second place last week, my turtle Nueva Espiranza has fallen back several spots. http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/greatturtlerace-map/

5 hours to spare.

I completed my written exam this morning and as you can imagine, I am pretty exhausted. I can't think anymore and am starting to get a headache. I ran out of food...ate all the salsa, blueberries, yogurt, shrimp, salmon...and I drank plenty of tea. I only had two cups of coffee surprisingly, but i never felt the need to crash either. Except around 4am each morning. I been going be strong the last few days and not stressing at all, but now I am feeling like i don't know what to do with myself. Wait...why am i still here. I still have 14 browser windows open, each with at least 10 tabs open to different resources. In addition i have stacks of printouts, overdue library books and i dried up two highlighters. And i managed to not run out of printer paper. My advice to anyone who is going to go through this process is to keep up with the reading...although, you are not going to know it all, you just need to know where to find the information. 2) be prepared physically and mentally. Get your meals ready, clothes, schedule etc. minimize the distractions and pace yourself. And of course don't forget to take a few breaks. I guess i didn't write enough during my exam cause i am still typing away. I wish this was my dissertation i was submitting!!! next year. But in the meantime. W.P.B. let me know if you need to know what that means.

Exams Day 2

Yesterday took me all day to get into the flow to answer the questions. I didn't get any sleep last night and have less then 20 hours to get to these questions which of course, are a little more difficult.

Vegas 09 -- Written Exams 4/1

Last week I traveled to Las Vegas NV, for a NSBE Convention and also presented at the American Association of Geographers (http://www.aag.org) conference. So for 7 days, I had to bare the heat and dry air. I had a good time though. It's always a great experience for me to be able to catch up with people i know and haven't seen or heard from in a while. I didn't spend much time at the AAG conference. I attended my chapter's party Wednesday night and Friday i presented on my research. It was a small audience but I am glad there were a few people there. The presentation itself was not very much technical content but I just wanted some feedback on my ideas.

The NSBE convention went well. I did the parliamentarian thing and made sure we got some folks elected into Regional Offices. But i am back in town and pretty tired. I have a lot of work to do in less then 36 hours to prepare for my written exam that didn't happen two weeks ago. I am probably going to do very minimal reading, i just want to clear my mind, be rested and relaxed come Wednesday April 1st. So i will go grocery shopping later to find me some brain food, and the cook up some meals so i can just pop them in the microwave. I set up a second office on campus so i can be isolated and surrounded by nothing but my books. But if i need a nap or to step out, I have a couch in my office right next door. So I am looking forward to Friday Night/Saturday morning to get past this milestone.

Blogger Mobile Post

I just added this mobile thingy o I can blog from my phone...but I have internet on my phone...s why didn't I just use the site directly...to much technology and access!

Exams on tuesday!

I finally wrote up a draft research proposal and submitted it to my committee on Friday the 13th. It clearly needs some more work but i needed to let them know what direction i was headed in with my research.

But now the exam is coming up. Today is Sunday...i have a 72 hour exam starting on tuesday. I have lots of books, papers, articles, resources ready to go. But i still haven't found a comfortable place to set up shop for this event. I am going to do some more reading for today and tomorrow and try and get as prepared as i can. Monday night...sleep well and Tuesday...get it crackin!