The Dreaded Comps

What’s the hottest topic in the higher education cohort right now? The comprehensive exam, lovingly known as “comps”. For the higher ed master’s program at GSE, as well as a few of the other programs, rather than completing a written thesis or completing a culminating project of some kind, we take comps, which is essentially a take home essay. Well, it’s an essay that has the power to determine your future – whether you get the master’s degree or not. Actually, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. If you don’t pass the first time, there are options, but you don’t really talk about those until after the exam. In my opinion, the bad part about the comps structure is that they occur pretty early in the Spring semester, before you've been fully immersed and exposed to all of your Spring courses. I keep wondering if things I will learn more about later this semester would have been helpful in my writing…

We had our comps this weekend and I’m so relieved they’re over! We received an email on Friday morning at 9:00am with the two prompts, we had to choose one, write an essay of no more than 2,000 words (that part was really difficult!) and submit it by 5:00pm on Monday. 80 hours. That’s all the time you get to read the essay choices, identify your topic, plan your essay, do any final research, write the essay itself, proofread, revise, and attempt to cut your precious words down to only 2,000. Oh, and don’t forget time to sleep, eat, shower (or not), and if you’re anything like me, factor in some time for coffee breaks, distractions, and procrastination. Sounds really daunting, right? I actually found that the weekend was more than enough time to complete the essay sufficiently and even maintain my mental health. I guess I've been training for this process for the past six months – I love the adrenaline rush from deadlines!

As a cruel joke played by Mother Nature this weekend, we had a break from the snow and below-freezing temperatures and experienced sunshine and temperatures in the high 50’s! I couldn't let that weather go to waste, so I made sure to leave my jacket at home and take a few walks to get food and coffee. They were nice breaks and I made sure to take the scenic route to get places to give me a little more time outside. I also took some time to de-stress by watching the Olympics and meeting my best friend for brunch on Sunday! It ended up being a really nice weekend, excluding the whole writing process, of course :-P

At this point, I've submitted my exam, I did my best, and now it’s really out of my hands. Originally I was worried about writing the exam, then I was worried about receiving bad results, but it’s not worth expending the energy right now. We won’t hear our results back until the end of March, so there’s no sense in worrying until then – I still have a lot more work in the meantime! Passing comps is only half the battle. I still have to make it through the rest of my coursework to graduate!

I figured I’d share a few pictures that I found before, during, and after this weekend. Side note: I wish I hadn't thrown all of my coffee cups away because it would have made a great picture! You would need two hands to count how many iced coffees I consumed in three days…

My stack of materials for the weekend - laptop, iPad, and
all of my old readings and notes from all of my classes.
(Not pictured: copious amounts of iced coffee)

This is how I thought I would feel this weekend
(from Pinterest)

Thanks for the advice, Walt!
(from Pinterest)

This is now my primary concern!
(from Pinterest)