The joy of doctoral exams

I haven't posted on my blog this past month as I have been busy concentrating on my comprehensive exams for my PhD in history. Comprehensive exams or comps as they are called are a two day testing process where you are tested over the entire field of European history from 1600 to present. You are not allowed notes or other study aides, just some clean notebook paper, your exam questions and a lab top which you type your answers into. Day one consisted of European history 1600 to 1815 while day two was 1815 to present. I don't feel like I did very well at all. The only thing that I am sure of is that I know absolutely nothing about European history or at least that is how I feel at the moment. I will not know find out if I passed or not until a couple of weeks from now. If I did actually pass (which will be a miracle) I will get to move on to the oral examination which is two hours of grilling by my committee members about what I did not write down in my exam or what I got wrong. So, if I pass the orals, then I will have passed my comps and get to move on to my major and minor field exams and write a dissertation.

Now back to my post comps feeling like my brain is fried.