Semester Five

By way of an update, my fifth semester of graduate school is in the books. This one started out all nice - allowing me to keep regular hours with my wife - and ended not very nice with early mornings and late nights and lots of stress. But, just as all other semesters have done, this one somehow ended without disaster and I live to face another academic day. But even with all that, this was my favorite semester so far. And I expect it to get even better over the next two-and-a-half years.

It was such an academically interesting semester - though somewhat tempered by the late dash to the finish line - because I got to work on real projects with real data, because I got to read up on possible dissertation areas and because at least one of my classes was conceptually fascinating.

Unfortunately, next semester I'll have to take three classes, so my time will unavoidably be consumed with coursework, which while interesting will likely be rather tiresome. But come this summer, I can get down to the business of dissertation research. Between now and then I'll have to assemble a dissertation committee and dissertation proposal and then probably at the end of the summer I'll take my comprehensive exam.