I am now officially a doctoral CANDIDATE.  My advisor signed off on the revisions to my proposal.

In my program, you advance to candidacy when you:

  1. Complete and have your comprehensive exams signed off on
  2. Complete and have your dissertation proposal signed off on

Of course, our proposal is the first three chapters of our dissertation, written in future tense.  (“This study will do X” rather than “This study did X”.)  I actually think this was the hard part, because those chapters include the literature review and methods.  Once you get those signed off on its all about following the methods you decided on and then writing up the conclusions.  I actually intend to do nearly all of the statistical analysis today and start writing up the results tomorrow.  First draft of the last two chapters will go to my advisor before the end of the month.

I will graduate in May.  I have to.  Chair is leaving on sabbatical for a year (in Spain; lucky bastard) in July, so I need to be done before that.  The end is in sight, and a HUGE weight is already off my shoulders….