Comps

You'll never guess what I'm doing. Unless you're one of the people whom I've already told, that is.

I'm taking the comprehensive exam for the doctoral program in educational leadership at UND. I'm sitting at my home computer because our cohort are the guinea pigs for the department's experiment: administering the comps on-line this year. We received no indication in advance of the possible questions, or even probable line of questioning, to expect. We were simply told to log onto Blackboard (an on-line "learning environment" where instructors can post assignments and resources, students can join discussion groups and check grades, and cohort students can find their comprehensive exam questions and deliver their answers to a "drop box") at 1:00 P.M. today to download the questions for the "short answer" part of the exam. There were eight questions from which to choose six, and we had two hours to type up our answers and deliver them electronically via Blackboard. They were due at 3:00 P.M., after which we had an hour off.

At 4:00 P.M., the "integrated essay" questions were available. We have 30 hours to complete our answers to two essay questions. They are due by 10:00 P.M. tomorrow. We should know the results in eight weeks.

STRESS-FUL!