Mikey passed his comps

Mike passed his oral exam on Friday. The previous week he did the written part and passed that as well. For anyone that does not know what this all entails I will describe it the best way I can.

Mike has a committee of four professors, each one represents a different area of history. There is one for Southern, Early US, Modern US, and Agriculture. Mikey is expected to have mastered these fours areas of history. He has spend many days, months, years reading books and articles that cover these topics. For the written part of his test, each professor gave him 1 or 2 essay questions to answer. He took the written part of the exam over four days, with each day being for one topic. He had an afternoon to complete each essay. The answers to the essay questions averaged about 10 pages, so this is a lot of writing. He found out a few days after he completed the written part that he had passed. However, he now had to be orally tested by each of these professor. Yesterday he met with his committee and they spent almost 3 hours questioning and picking apart what he had written on his written exam as well as adding more questions for him to answer orally. After this long drawn out process (I asked Mike if the time went fast or slow and he informed me that it went very slow), the committee asked Mike to leave as they discussed whether or not he had met their requirements of having mastered this topics in history and therefore had passed. Well of course he had, like I knew he would, but talk about a stressing situation.

I am glad he was able to get through it as well as grateful I didn't have to do it. Thank goodness he will never have to do that again. Mike is so relieved to have that behind him, as am I. Now, he will begin on his dissertation and hopefully within two years he will be completely finished. The end is in sight. Yeah!