theorywatch

In case you’re wondering:

The faculty who will be reading the comprehensive exams here have volunteered to do so, whether or not they are teaching this summer, just because it’s important to all the people taking these exams. So there is a pretty full quorum of faculty available, don’t worry!

They will try to get everything read as soon as possible, regardless of other commitments (including any conference travel.)

They really do prefer to see people do well on these, believe it or not.

However, the results generally will come out more slowly than you would like, despite their best efforts!

Back in the days when I was running marathons, one of the things we did was to “taper” during the last week of training in order to reserve lots of energy for the actual day of the event. Everybody reading this who has been training for “the event” on Friday should now be tapering. (And maybe even do something like watch this —or the junk tv program of your choice — instead of all that professional reading you’ve been doing! We also used to carbo-load, but you don’t need to do that, as it turned out to be not very helpful….)

And, for heavens sake, relax!