Hey guys! Guess what I did on September 25th...
I PASSED MY COMPREHENSIVE EXAM!
Just to make sure y'all are as excited as I am, I'm going to detail what exactly this pass means for me as a grad student. When I entered the Biology Ph.D. program here at PSU, I was given this checksheet:
This is a list of all of the things I need to do to graduate from Penn State with a Ph.D. in Biology. You've probably noticed the rather short list of required course work - this is intentional (and highly appreciated!). Biology is such a broad subject that the department would rather focus it's efforts on teaching it's graduate students how to build connections and give talks (BIOL 590), read/write scientific papers (BIOL 592), and teach effectively (BIOL 598 & 602) than take a series of general biology classes that you might not need for your speciality. Example: while a plant physiology course would certainly be interesting and informative, I might not really need a full semester's worth of that information to conduct my research with mammals, invertebrates, and/or reptiles. |