After a week or two, the Graduate School got back to my advisor and told her, "That's up to your department chair, we don't have specific rules about it here." Since the other still-available member of my prospective committee is the department chair, it looks like we're back on--although, that said, we still haven't figured out a time when the three of us can all meet at once. We have more latitude, though, since without our erstwhile third member (who was only available until the end of March), we can look at doing it sometime in the first couple weeks of April. Which would frankly be fine with me, because there's a lot to review.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I'm very glad they at least saw there was bullshit and are trying to get around it!

------
Authors of our fates
Orchestrate our fall from grace
Poorest players on the stage
Our defiance drives us straight to the edge

Looks like I didn't think to update this thread when we finally did settle on a time, so: we did this earlier today, and I passed. There are still a few administrative things to do before it's official, but all the academic requirements for my MA are now complete. I should graduate next month (although this time around I won't be attending the actual commencement ceremony).

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

-Droken

Any plans beyond graduation, aside from some well-earned rest?

------
Authors of our fates
Orchestrate our fall from grace
Poorest players on the stage
Our defiance drives us straight to the edge

I'm investigating the prospects of continuing on, and possibly resurrecting my abandoned thesis as a dissertation, but nothing concrete yet.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Congratulations! 卒業おめでとうございます！

- T.Z.
==================================================

Friends... they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.
--Henry David Thoreau

==================================================

dbrandon

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

L.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war informed, with the rest of the paperwork in place, that it may not be after all. My advisor will be required to make the case for me by proxy at a sort of departmental star chamber next Monday. Apart from providing her with a précis of what I believe I've learned in that respect and what use I feel it has been to my Progression as a Scholar (which I have done), I have no part to take in this process myself.

I'm particularly vexed by this because the GIS course that I'm taking this semester, for which I have no need of the credits, was characterized as a sort of capstone on this "technical alternate" requirement, which is why, once my oral exam was done, I didn't withdraw or convert it to an audit. The deadline for doing that has now passed, which means I'm on the hook for an elaborate final project and other work that may now be of no value. I'm in the strange position of being busier and under more deadline pressure now that I've passed the oral than I was before it.

(And because we can't do anything about the potential next phase until this is decided. There's no point applying for the PhD program if I don't know for sure I'll have my MA in June. This has knock-on implications for fall enrollment and the prospect of further extending financial aid, the latter of which is a concern, since I've hit the cap for the academic level I'm at now.)

So anyway, yeah. Upshot is, I'm pretty short on surplus capacity at the moment, despite what you may have thought--and I did think--would be a bit of a post-examination respite. Normal service will presumably be restored at some point, but that point is not now. :/

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I'm actually somewhat surprised at this. The second language requirement has/had a particular rationale (1) and I personally don't see how the digital scholarship material (which I am not disparaging) could meet it.

I hope this gets resolved in your favour, them being confused shouldn't affect your ability to graduate.

(1) As an example, Columbia's rationale:
> The foreign language requirement forms part of Columbia College’s mission to prepare students to be tomorrow’s conscientious and informed citizens. Knowledge of another’s language and literature is the most important way to begin to know a country and people. The study of a foreign language:

> Sensitizes students to world cultures, simultaneously making them aware of their own culture within that context;
> Introduces students to the differences in structure, grammar and syntax that distinguish two languages, and to the intimate links between language and cultural meaning; and
> Contributes to the development of students’ critical, analytical and writing skills.

-VR
I learned more about English grammatical structure in my French classes than I learned in my English classes.
"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."

I want to know how your advisor formed this impression, because it seems to me that this is the sort of thing that somebody should have put down in writing, to wave before the board. Either that, or the impression should have been corrected before this point.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

The news has reached me this evening that the request was in fact approved, though it's contingent on the outcome of the course I'm currently taking; the work undertaken before it was deemed insufficient by itself. So I still have to do this fershluginer final project, but at least I don't have to spend the summer hurriedly trying to learn French or something.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Nope, instead you can be tutored in it at your leisure by the charming Countess.

Oh. Wait, that's UF you. And I think it was determined he knew french? He certainly had no problems communicating with the residents of a certain time locked location...

In 2405, he didn't know French at any level worthy of note. Sometime between there and 2411 he picked up enough that he understands French quite well, but his accent is somewhere around the level of the metaphorical Spanish cow.

Peter Eng
--
"You speak French like a Spanish cow," is roughly equivalent to, "Your accent is the worst I've ever heard. Please stop butchering my language."

The quote was "We appreciate the effort, especially from an American teenager. But you sound like a drunken Englishman, so please stop." Normandy region, France, July 1989. Said to me and my mate while we were punk high school students on a short bus tour of the region.

But the request was made in good humor, and my accent WAS terrible, so all was well. We met a lot of people who were surprised Americans teenagers would make the effort, but never anybody who gave us any grief. A lot humor at our accent, some great laughs at group attempts to overcome a lack of vocabulary, and a fascinating two-hour conversation about shotguns and hunting in a small village gunsmith shop. The owner didn't have a lick of English and we hadn't a lick of technical vocabulary, but we had a lot fun comparing notes.

So, if I can do it, so can you, Gryphon. Good luck!

That would require the cooperation of the Department of Parapsychology, of which no professors Gryphon has taken a course with exist, much less are available.