Comprehensive Exams complete!

Hello Project ACL team!

I am writing to you after I recently spent 14 exhausting days completing my comprehensive examinations. This terrifying and crucial milestone is a test of comprehensive knowledge, required by all doctoral students before they are permitted to advance to candidacy and complete their dissertation research.

After the test had begun, I spent my evenings writing page after page, answering four separate prompts, until I had 60 pages of doctoral knowledge translated from my brain and somehow neatly organized into the longest paper I've ever written. While I was relieved to be done staring at my computer screen for an absurd amount of hours each day, another milestone loomed over my head - the comprehensive exam defense. I have had nightmares about this moment since starting my graduate degree. The exam defense goes a little like this: You enter the room, praying to any and every higher power you know that they don't ask you about that one thing you haven't been able to quite grasp. Five of the smartest people you know stare at you from across the table while you answer questions related to anything you may have learned during your doctoral education. Shaking and sweating, you attempt to form complete sentences and debate whether you even deserve to be in the same room as these people. "Future colleagues?" you laugh to yourself, "Impossible." They ask you about that one thing you haven't been able to quite grasp and it takes every ounce of self-control inside of you to refrain from flinging your hands up and asking everyone to forget you were even here, clearly this whole doctor thing really isn't for you. There are disappointed looks from your professors, which lead to tears, which lead to more fumbling of words. And then they ask you (FINALLY) about something you know really well and your heart beats a little slower and your hands shake a little less and your face lights up when you answer. After nearly two hours of this, you leave the room so they can discuss your fate - whether you passed or failed this crucial milestone in your doctoral journey. All the sweaty, shaky, nervy everything returns.

And then, after what seems like a decade, they call you back in to congratulate you and sign this powerful little piece of paper, permitting you to advance to doctoral candidacy!

 

This is my committee chair, Dr. Cris Stickley. (His shirt says Ohio State because yes, he IS that big of a fanboy alumnus.)

So, as the newest doctoral candidate at the University of Hawaii, I want to thank you for your support in allowing this research to happen and fueling my passion for injury prevention. Project ACL takes place in 2 weeks and we are so excited to train and educate a group of young women, in hopes that they will decrease their chances of sustaining an ACL injury. This was all made possible through your support and encouragement, and I can't wait to share the rest of this journey with you! Kindly, Liz