Wednesday, April 18, 2007

The Next Stage

I have finished Preliminary Exams (called Comprehensive Exams at other schools) and am now officially ABD.

My advisor has already alerted me to several job listings for which I am now eligible to apply. Scary!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ignore those recommendations. Very few people hire ABDs (and then only if they can really see that the dissertation is almost done) and there is nothing like a new job to hinder (or even halt) progress on finishing the thing.

You have arrived at the time when you can work on your projet, refine what it is, work out the complicated details. Focus on that for a few years before you start thinking about what's next.

If you want to prepare yourself for the what's next, use conferences to give you deadlines to get certain ideas into shape to be discussed. And then revise one or two of thsoe conference papers and submit them to good journals in your field.

Jules said...

I remember the feeling after I passed the Ph.D. Qualifying Exam, as they call it at Georgia Tech. Congratulations, a little late.

(I got here from reading your jury duty story from the WTM Boards.)