By Fits and Starts

It's been five weeks since we took the PhD Comprehensive Exam for Economic Theory. Everybody is getting anxious about the outcome. Everybody is expecting the results to come out anytime now. Passing this thing would be the last hurdle for me and could possibly be the last paper exam I have to take in my life. One can interpet passing this exam in many ways: (1) it's a permanent shift upwards of your lifetime income path, (2) you can start calling yourself an all but dissertation (ABD) PhD candidate, and (3) you're 200 pages or so away from being a PhD. The bottom line, you'd rather get it over with now than have to study all over again for it. There are high and lows in graduate school, passing and failing a comprehensive is one of them.

When I decided to go to graduate school one of my goals was to prove that an average student can actually earn a graduate degree with the least amount of effort. So in those many times that I looked like I was slacking I was just actually making a point :) This is for all those contemporaries at the UPSE. Those guys who with me were able to find loopholes and escape hatches in the strict academic rules set by the college. Unfortunately for the guys that followed us, the academic rules committee was able to plug the holes. Me and my buddies spent more time getting around these rules during our tenure at the college, probably the big reason why after I got my undergrad degree I felt like I didn't learn anything and had to go to grad school to really learn economics.

There were rumors that today would be the day results will come out. I came into my office just before lunch time and didn't see any sealed envelope. I went to lunch and tried to swallow the food. People heard rumors about this person passing it and this person failing it. Then I went back to my office just before 3 pm and there it was the sealed envelope with my name typewritten across the address line. I closed my office door, my heart was just going nuts, took a deep breath, sat on my chair because you don't know when your knees will give up on you. Then I tore one end of the envelope. It took me a few seconds to pull out the letter inside because it seemed glued to the envelope. Then I started reading: "It is my pleasure to inform you that..."