Showdown

Today was my A-Exam, the one last major obstacle between me and freedom to work exclusively on my thesis research. I had to stand in a room across from two members of my committee and my advisor. It's an odd sort of feeling, you respect them and they want you to do well, but for the next little while it is an intellectual melee and you can do nothing but take your lumps and hold on till the ride is over. And don't think that I could have studied even more and out gunned them; these are experienced men whose rhetoric is lined with lessons they have learned, and whose faces are lined with scars they earned while learning them.

I fared relatively well. I got taken out behind the woodshed over a couple of methods they felt I should have known, but most of the general biology questions I was prepared for (thanks in no small part to the advice given by the upperclassmen in my lab). Nothing left but a few short pages to write on the topics they thought I should have known. After that I'll be in the clear.

Now all I have to do is find a way to celebrate. I'm sure there will be a happy hour somewhere with my name on it. And i'll have plenty of company, because I am, afterall, a Deadly Handsome Man.