{"id":573881409,"date":"2011-03-21T21:24:43","date_gmt":"2011-03-22T02:24:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573881409"},"modified":"2011-03-23T17:49:06","modified_gmt":"2011-03-23T22:49:06","slug":"the-comps-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2011\/03\/21\/the-comps-defense\/","title":{"rendered":"The comps defense"},"content":{"rendered":"

The day has finally come to defend what I wrote a month ago<\/a>. In fact, this day has come twice, but the previously scheduled meeting was canceled which was … inconvenient.<\/p>\n

So it was rescheduled, and this was that day. I had to drive to Alabama, which you might know is more than a little commute. And I managed to do this behind every slow truck, 18-wheeler and septuagenarian who didn’t have anywhere important to be. Normally this isn’t a problem, but I had somewhere to be at a certain time, months in the making. And there were middle-of-nowhere two-lane roads to travel. Each time the road straightened out and the dotted lines gave me permission, another slow moving truck would come from the other direction.<\/p>\n

This commute took ever second it should and a few more it shouldn’t have. I walked into the meeting where my adviser was on his phone, calling me. Later I heard a voicemail with myself in the background, which was unusual. But that would be hours later.<\/p>\n

For almost two hours I was grilled on my comps answers. “Why did you write this? Why didn’t you write that? What would work better? What theory? Why this adjective?”<\/p>\n

On and on it went, my brain already a little bit fried from the drive, the Mondayness of it all and this being the first day back from a week … not off, but a week with a lot less in it. <\/p>\n

In the end the professors kicked me out of the room and voted on me. And now the comps are defended, I’m A.B.D. and can move on to the dissertation. This is good because I’ve been thinking and worrying over the comps since last Thanksgiving. You might remember I was supposed to take the comps in January, but those plans were snowed out<\/a>. I’ve been living under this for a while. It will be nice to put this stuff behind me. <\/p>\n

\"Cheese\"<\/center><\/p>\n

I celebrated at Samford with dinner and grading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The day has finally come to defend what I wrote a month ago. In fact, this day has come twice, but the previously scheduled meeting was canceled which was … inconvenient. So it was rescheduled, and this was that day. I had to drive to Alabama, which you might know is more than a little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,28,3,10,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573881409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alabama","category-iphone","category-monday","category-photo","category-samford"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573881409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573881409"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573881409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573881411,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573881409\/revisions\/573881411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573881409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573881409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573881409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}