It was the best of times…

Yesterday had the potential to be one of the happiest days of my life or one of the worst. And I didn’t know which way it would go until about 2 p.m.

For a Ph.D. program, there’s a bunch of “major” hurdles students have to overcome. First, the classwork itself. Then you have comps – which vary from school to school and program to program. Mine, turns out, were some of the most intensive comps I’ve ever heard of a Ph.D. student encountering – seriously. I had a week of written comps then a day of oral comps. I remember the day I heard I passed written comps (October 24) and the day I passed oral comps (Halloween).

After passing comps, most universities declare you ABD – All But Dissertation (aka All But Done). However, Super Duper is different, as you are not declared ABD until you pass your dissertation proposal meeting, which, for me, occurred yesterday.

That’s right. I’m officially ABD.

The dissy proposal meeting occurs after you write your first three chapters of your dissertation – your introduction, where you discuss why you’re doing this study; your literature review, where you discuss the theory you’re backing your research up on and other research related to your study; and the method section, which tells how you’re going to do the research. Should be about 30 pages.

Mine ended up being 51 pages.

And I’m concise. I don’t write long papers, but this one turned out to be a beast. However, I’d rather be thorough than not ABD.

So, yeah, I’m ABD. I may repeat myself, because I’m just really overjoyed at this point.

What was really awesome, though, was all the support I received. My aunt sent me a card of encouragement last week. My husband prayed over me before I left heading south. I had multiple texts from friends yesterday morning saying they were praying for me. A friend accompanied me to Super Duper yesterday to keep me sane. My coworkers even sent flowers to Super Duper!! =) It was just really nice knowing that I had so much support for this endeavor.

After being declared ABD and holding the flowers from my coworkers

But the hard work, prayers, and support have paid off. I’m ABD.

Speaking of which, if any of you have friends who work at universities (not in the south region), I need people to help with my study!! So…yeah, let me know so I can move from ABD to Ph.D., lol!

Then we’re going to really party!