Here's the view from my recent jump:

In other words, I passed my Comps exam!!!! I was jumping up and down so high that I could see this aerial shot of Denver! It's celebration time now. (Actually probably Saturday, but I do have a few beers chilling in the fridge.) YAY!

Today is my last class of grad school! Yippee! By 9:00 tonight, I'll be done with classes. I'm not done with my degree, as I still have a few papers to write over the summer, but no more classes. I was beginning to think this day would never come.

I'm a patient person. Really I am. I am not checking my email every five minutes. I am not checking like a fanatic to see if I missed a call on my cell phone. I am not incessantly looking for my results to come back. I passed. I passed with flying colors. (Say it with me!) I passed. I passed. I passed... (If you close your eyes at night, you can probably hear me saying it over and over and over)

Over the past three months, I’ve put in countless hours of studying. I studied with a study group in Boulder every Sunday. I used every spare minute I could find—on the train commuting; reading at night before bed, in the morning over breakfast, on my breaks at work; all day on every Tuesday; etc. All for one thing…comps. Comprehensive exams. The exam that determines my fate as a linguist. Passing means I get my degree…not passing means I don’t; I’ve spent two years studying; paid nearly twenty thousand for advanced education. Yesterday was the day. I was all kinds of confident going in. Coming out, not so much. All the confidence was pretty drained by the vagueness of the questions. Now comes the waiting game. Waiting for the results. I thought that studying was hard. But the waiting game is harder. Ok, it’s a different kind of harder. But it’s not fun.

Remember how I posted that I didn't have to buy a single text book this semester? Well, that's still true. But, a new book by one of my professors just came out. It's called, Common Ground, Contested Territory: Examining the Roles of English Language Teachers in Troubled Times (Surviving Innovation, volume 2), by Mark Clarke. I've already read nearly all of it (we got advanced pdfs since we knew the author, and it was required reading for our class), and it's fantastic! It's great for all you teachers out there, especially language teachers. Here's a link to where you can buy it. I'll be buying one too, even though I already have most of it. I think this will be the first time that I've voluntarily bought a book (for school) that I didn't have to. Ok, that's not true. I buy all the "recommended" books. But, not anymore! Definitely check out the book. It's fabulous! Anyway, here's the link:

Can you believe this? In all my years of college and graduate school (that makes 5 1/2), I have always had to buy upwards of $200 per semester for books alone. One semester I spent over $750 in books (all bought on-line and used). But this semester, for the first time ever, I have NO books to buy. NOT EVEN ONE! Can you believe that? This is awesome! Everyone should have a semester, or twelve, like this one.

Thank you Al Gore for "your" wonderful invention of the internet!

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