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.
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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
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