Congratulations Dave!

Dave Lent passed his comprehensive exams in Neuroscience today!

This time for real.

We posted a message in late March about Dave Lent passing his prelims. The message was up for about 6 hours before we realized he said that he "took his prelims" rather than "passed" his prelims*. Ooops, sorry... I got excited. Good thing I have a cute hubby who wakes up early and can edit my inner (online) monologue. Anyway, what is more accurate is that Dave took his writtens in late March -- actually, all three sections in 27 hours or something ridiculous like that -- us mere mortals take one section (i.e. 3 hours of written exams) a day. (He took two in one day and the third the next morning).

Not surprising, he passed.

He has been trying ever since to schedule his orals, the last hurdle before a student can pass comps. A person's 5 member committee all meets in one room for two hours. Dave has said that scheduling the meeting has been "the most difficult part of the whole process." So after a long sleepless weekend in Vegas drinking & playing poker with my beloved, he took his oral exam today.

Not surprising, he passed.

Way to go, Dave. Now it's only six months until graduation... the minimum amount of time required by our program between comps and graduating. The rest of us mere mortals can stay for years after comps, but I have a funny feeling that Dave will be a little ahead of the curve.



*For those of you who aren't familiar, these are the tests every student must pass to get their Ph.D. Three days of written exams (three hours each) and two hour oral exam by the student's five committee members. This is a big stressful event in every student's grad school life. And a requirement to graduate.