Thursday, May 30th, 2013

Good morning, folks.  Well, the moment you've all been waiting for. 

I PASSED!!

It was extremely intense.  It was everything everybody prepared me for and more.  2 hours and 15 minutes of rapid-fire questioning, attacking, dubious concerns, etc...  To put it fairly, they grilled me - big time.  Even though all of my older friends who have passed in previous years told me it would be like this, I still was shaken.  At one point I glanced down at my watch and saw I had at least an hour to go.  At that moment, I had just poorly answered a question and sincerely felt like everything was crumbling.  I forced myself to just keep my head in the game, though. 

You know that saying "Keep Calm and Carry On"

Well that couldn't have applied MORE in my situation yesterday.  Even if you feel like you're flopping, just stay focused and carry on.  Also, after I finished, when I really systematically racked my brain to recall what I was asked, I responded well to a lot of questions.  It's just that the questions I didn't know stuck out in my mind more (like usual - I always remember the bad things I did over the good...I need to work on it).

When I finished, my ACE committee sent me out of the room for about 10 minutes.  When they invited me back in they were all smiles and laughs (which there had been NONE of during the presentation).  They told me I passed and then went through some positives & negatives, strengths & weaknesses.  I ran up to my lab and jumped up & down and they all congratulated me.  Then we had lemon curd tart and sparkly water during lab meeting to celebrate Karen's 28th B-day (which was also yesterday) and my passing. 

When I went home, Brian and I walked the pups up to NYRR headquarters to pick up my race bib for today's 5k after work.  It's down on wall street.  I am completely unprepared and my head still hurts a little from the champagne last night.  Oh well...its 3.1 miles.  No big deal. 

Then I popped the fancy bubbly that my boss, Mike gave me at our dual going-away party when I left Penn for WCMC and he went on to Univ. of Michigan.  I messaged him a picture of it.  Brian also got me a piece of ACE Carrot Cake (see above picture).  The top picture I took when Bear was listening to me practice my presentation (why did I spend so much time on that?  They interrupted me non-stop so it resembled nothing of my practice talk). 

The bottom is an email I got from the WCMC dean this morning.  :-) 

Grad School Milestone #1 is complete. 

I feel so free. 

Let SUMMER begin!

Carpe diem,

J