I heard back from our secretary, and apparently, she got the runaround from West Lafayette about the submission of my Plan of Study. She sent it in May, ‘Too early.’ She sent it in August/September, ‘Too late.’ Poor woman can’t win. It’s cool. This affords me more time to study, meet with each of my committee members on a regular basis to discuss the nuances of the exam, and most importantly, SLEEP!!!! YES!!
I thought about what it meant to get my master’s degree after technically 4 years, as opposed to the 2 that it should have taken. Considering my coursework, it really amounts to 2 1/2 years… I thought about timetables, and stress and how long it’s taken me, and how I should ‘be done by now,’ and how I felt like this degree meant that my life could officially ‘BEGIN.’
And that’s just not really the case. My life has continued along with this journey, and this degree is just a piece of the puzzle. Not the whole picture. There’s a lot of breathing room in that realization.
It’s just the hoops I’ve had to jump through to get to the point when I can say that I’m officially DONE. And it’s all been worth it. The student loans, the thesis project attempt, the change in committee members, the extra classes, all of it.
It doesn’t hold me back from finding a good job. I can always travel back to take the exam if that’s the position I’m in. I got this. I just have a little more time to prove it.
So, in the end, I will take comprehensive exams in March, and truly, really, actually graduate on May 16th, 2010.
