re-proposal, advancement to candidacy

I drove to Philly a day early today and surprised Steve with a re-proposal. :-) Well, he knew he was going to get a ring, but just didn't know when. Below is the link to the updated engagement photo album on my webshots--the story is there. It isn't nearly as elaborate as his proposal to me, but still sweet. :-)

http://community.webshots.com/album/311079491MkogBE

In other news, I officially advanced to PhD candidacy earlier this week. I had to submit a statement of educational goals, the checklist to show that my coursework & master's degree is completed, assemble my comprehensive exam and dissertation committee and provide a rationale for each member, and have planned out the topics that I'll read for comps. The faculty voted on it Tuesday, and I was approved. Horray! It isn't as big of a deal in our dept as finishing the master's, doing comps, or finishing the dissertation, but still nice to be officially approved. It is more expected that if you are in good standing that you *should* pass advancement (or else your committee has really f***ed up in passing you this far), but still a little nerve wracking to have the entire faculty talk about you in a meeting, even briefly! When I was talking about it to Steve earlier, I kept calling it "advancement to candy." LOL!

My research methods students have final papers due tomorrow, and I will have under 2 weeks to grade 50 papers, all approx 10 pages long. Wish me luck!