Four years ago, we moved to West Lafayette, Indiana, and started working at Purdue. The first semester was rough, with a lot of reading, a lot of working, and undiagnosed Lyme disease. We chose research areas, applied for major grants, and Lee received an Honorable Mention from the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program.
By the end of the first year, both our advisers left for another university. Our work responsibilities evolved, our intended research focuses changed, and the reading load stayed high. While it wasn't our plan, we wound up with the same adviser. Lee earned all possible graduate student teaching awards while at Purdue, and even had almost 30 of his first-year undergraduate students attend his doctoral defense, a first in our program. Ana won a dissertation fellowship and the departmental service award for her work.
We eventually zeroed in on PhD topic areas. Ana had some problems getting research subjects, and wound up restarting her dissertation in March 2016, when intending to graduate in May 2016 (or at least by August). She managed to get it done, but it was rough. Meanwhile, Lee was already working in a new job, trying to finish his dissertation while setting up a new engineering undergraduate program halfway across the country.
So what exactly did we do for four years? If you're not sure what getting a PhD means, take a look at the Illustrated Guide to a PhD. Lee studied how to help student groups in first-year engineering courses work better, and Ana followed seven elementary school students through three years of learning about engineering and technology to see how they learned. Combined, our PhDs are over 500 pages of work.
Wine and humor got us through our PhD years - we enjoyed classics like Grad Student Deconstructs Take-Out Menu, What Should We Call Grad School, and finally made it through the Snake Fight. We both defeated the snake.
After all, the best dissertation defense is a good offense.
Along with grad school came home ownership, pet ownership, and Midwest living. We're keeping the cats, but we'll be renting for now and moving back east, though more south than we've been before.
Here's to the next four years!
