Dr. Joyce!!!

I had my oral this morning and I passed!!! It wasn't bad. My committee and I sat around the round table (some of you know which table that is) and they asked me some questions and I answered them to the best of my ability. I thought I would have to do a calibration problem, but thank goodness, I wasn't asked to do one. My brain tends to freeze up when doing math under pressure. The oral lasted about 2 hours and 20 minutes. The chair (my adviser) of my committee then asked me to step outside of the room for a few minutes while they decided my fate. It felt like the wait was about 30 minutes, but in reality it was only about 6 minutes. My committee congratulated me with hugs and handshakes and called me doctor!!! Wow!!! It doesn't seem real yet.

I Passed!!!

I found out this afternoon that I passed my third and final written exit exam!!! Yay!!! All I have left is the oral which should not be anywhere near as tough as the written exams were. For the oral, my committee and I will sit around the "round table"; they will ask me questions and I will hopefully be able to answer them. Then I will be done! I am so ready to be done.

I'm Still Here

I took my 3rd exit exam last Tuesday and I am waiting to hear the results. All I know so far is that I did very well on the plant disease diagnostics portion. There were 5 other parts to the exam and so there are 5 more professors that have to grade their part. As usual the exam was hard and it lasted for 9 hours. It covered pretty much every area of plant pathology.

My oral is in 2 weeks and I am now studying for that even though I am so sick of studying that I don't want to read anything. I think that is why I am not blogging very much. I don't even feel like reading what I write, so I don't write.

But soon I'll be finished, I hope...

Studying For Finals

I'm sorry that I haven't been posting on my blog very often. But, my 3rd final and oral are coming up very soon and I have been studying. I found out that it's impossible for me to work 32 hours a week while studying as I had planned. So for the last couple of weeks I worked 25 hrs a week and this coming week, I will work only 12 hours. At this point, I hardly care about the lack of money; I just have to pass my remaining finals.

My husband took this picture of me today and I thought I would share it with you. This is what I spent my weekend doing.



I fell asleep while studying yesterday, but I think I'm awake here.

A Report On My Interview

I'm sorry to take so long to update you on my interview. I have been feeling so tired since I got back.

I did not get a job offer. I found out that the department does not have the funding yet. They have funding to conduct a faculty search, but no money to fund the position yet. It seems a little weird, but I understand why they are handling it this way. A few years ago they had funding for a faculty position, but they could not find anyone, so the funding was withdrawn.

I met with all six of the faculty, all guys. They were very nice. I got a tour of all of their labs and was not entirely impressed. The labs are very old and look more like storage spaces than functioning labs. In spite of this, they are a very prolific group. They all publish several papers every year. The older faculty have published several books on their area of expertise. There are about 30 M.S. and Ph.D. students in the department.

I’m not sure that I would fit in with this group. I would be starting from scratch as far as equipment is concerned. Since I do molecular biology, I would need the equipment that molecular work requires and as some of us know, that can be very expensive.

Anyway I gave my seminar on Citrus Huanglongbing and I think it went well. The room was full. A few people came that were not students or faculty, but had heard what the topic was going to be and so they came. My seminar went for 45 minutes and I then got bombarded with questions that went on for 25 minutes.

If nothing more comes from this, at least I got to give a seminar on my favorite plant disease and I got a free trip to my home state.

The Pressure Is On

Thank you to Makita who left comments here and the rest of you who left comments in Facebook, for your advice on how to handle this unexpected situation. Your ideas helped me with my response. I sent an email reply again describing the nature of the doctoral program that I am in and that the degree is not a Ph.D. I said that the training received in the program includes botany but we learn much more. I told them what that more was. I said that the program is application based rather than research based, but that I have research experience from my M.S. studies and from working as a molecular biologist. I also mentioned what topic I would choose to give a seminar on if I gave one there.

The reply that I got back was that they would be happy for me to give a seminar on that topic. So I am going! I'm already booked for the flight. I will spend the weekend meeting and visiting with all of the faculty and then give my seminar on Monday, March 1.

I'm both excited and nervous.

I'm Studying...Do I Need This?

I was checking my Yahoo email this evening. It has been about 5 days since I have looked at it and I am thinking that I should look at it more often because I got a very important email that I should have replied to by now. But my inattentiveness is not the purpose of this post. I writing this post because of the content in that email and I don't know what to say when I respond.

The email was an official invitation to do a seminar and interview for a faculty position at the university where I got my bachelor's degree. I would love to be back in my home state and working at that wonderful university. There is a problem though. This is a portion of the first sentence of the email: "...we understand that you are completing a PhD in Botany and the Department of ... would like to hear about your research." Do you see what the problem is now?

Heaven help me. How did this happen? I was in touch with one of the faculty a little over a year ago and thoroughly (or so I thought) discussed the nature of the doctoral program that I am in. I was told that they would be looking for someone that studies anything having to do with plants and that I would be the first one they thought of when they could fund the position. Somehow their need has morphed into botany.

They do not have a single female faculty member in the department and I suspect that they desperately need one to increase their diversity. They also do not have anyone doing any research on plants and desperately need to fill that gap as well. But I don't do research; I diagnose and manage plant health problems. That is what I told them a year ago and they said that was great.

Their preferred date for the seminar is March 1. So what am I going to say to them? I don't know. Any ideas?