If you read my posts last year, you'll remember The Wait. It appears that we'll be having a repeat of last year, as we have yet to get our permits. The bad news is that they've restructured the SCA, an organization which appears to be run like an elaborate shell game combined with leap frog. The good news is that for the moment, the man we really like is in charge, so we're hopeful we'll be getting word soon. In fact, I'm hoping this post helps, since I have just the type of luck where I tell you we're still waiting, only to get the "we have permits!" email moments later.
Here's hoping.
In the meantime, I finally got my proposal draft accepted, so now I'm enjoying a little bit of last-minute vacations, followed by prepping for my proposal defense. The defense consists of me giving a 20-min presentation where I cut said proposal in half to make it fit in the allotted time, while somehow still giving all the relavent information to the committee. Once I'm done, the committee gets to ask me all sorts of "fun" questions that I can hopefully talk my way out of. Provided all of that goes well, I'll be officially ABD (all but dissertation) and PhD candidate!
Jonathan and I also have been working to figure out how we want our mastaba benches to look and where we want to place our blocks, but without being in the field where we can see exactly what we have and how big everything is, it's terribly frustrating. We're also already writing up abstracts for conferences to present findings we have no idea if we'll actually find. :) Welcome to the world of academia, where everything's made up and the points don't matter.
The countdown will stay as-is, but given that my proposal defense is scheduled for Oct 1, I'm doubting we'll actually leave that day.
Here's hoping.
In the meantime, I finally got my proposal draft accepted, so now I'm enjoying a little bit of last-minute vacations, followed by prepping for my proposal defense. The defense consists of me giving a 20-min presentation where I cut said proposal in half to make it fit in the allotted time, while somehow still giving all the relavent information to the committee. Once I'm done, the committee gets to ask me all sorts of "fun" questions that I can hopefully talk my way out of. Provided all of that goes well, I'll be officially ABD (all but dissertation) and PhD candidate!
Jonathan and I also have been working to figure out how we want our mastaba benches to look and where we want to place our blocks, but without being in the field where we can see exactly what we have and how big everything is, it's terribly frustrating. We're also already writing up abstracts for conferences to present findings we have no idea if we'll actually find. :) Welcome to the world of academia, where everything's made up and the points don't matter.
The countdown will stay as-is, but given that my proposal defense is scheduled for Oct 1, I'm doubting we'll actually leave that day.
