Done!

I turned in my responses to the Comprehensive Exam questions. The common wisdom is that everyone worries too much, that it's not as tough as you think it will be. Wrong. Maybe I just believed that too much and had dialed down my expectations too far. Maybe I will feel better about them in a week or a month and say the same thing. But right now, I think they were every bit as hard and as stressful as I imagined. And I am grateful for every study group meeting and for every hour that I spent preparing because I think it would have been even harder without that.

I struggled with every question, each in a different way. One draft was 9 pages long and had to be cut with a machete by a third. Another question caused a visceral response in me--when I was unable to detach from it, I wrote it into the paper which feels like a risk. One was more intellectually challenging than anything I've encountered in graduate school before (and this is my second Master's...). I took a risk on another by choosing an unconventional format--I think it works but that doesn't mean the person who grades it will.

All in all, I'm just glad to be done!     #

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