Success!

After this week this is all Amit and Marinda feel like saying - that or "We Survived!"

All week Amit went to school and worked hard preparing for his General Exam.  For those of you who need a reminder it is the last step in becoming a Ph.D. canadate and goes something like this:

One week before the exam Amit is called into his advisor's office to recived his topic.  "I felt eger to get started.  I know, I was naive back then," Amit said when asked about his feelings going into that meeting.  The topic given him was "using remote-sensing observations of Venus, Earth and Mars to determine planetary environmental properties."  Some of you may think "Cool!", but to put it into the right perspective think of someone taking you to a national park and saying "ok, you have a week to go though every single tree to tell us in an hour which specific trees in minute detail are the most important."  In other words, this is a huge topic that he only had a week to research and figure out how to present in an hour.  Having posters advertising his exam plastered all over the department didn't help.  "Every time I turned around it was like someone was shouting 'Attention!  You're facing the Fire Lord tomorrow!'"

On one of the doors leading into the Physics/Astronomy Building

The next step was his presentation.  Exactly one week after he was given his topic, Amit suited up, set up his projector and to a room filled with his dissertation committee, students, professors and his wife, he gave an AWESOME presentation!  He nailed it in every respect and afterwards the other graduate students couldn't stop tell Marinda how great of a job he did!

For the last step, Marinda bid him fair well as for the next hour and a half he was locked in the room alone with his committee while they grilled him over an open fire pit.  Ok, the fire pit didn't actually happen, building fire codes and such, but they did grill him about everything he knew.  This part had been known to go on for three hours (mostly due to committee members getting off topic) so before hand Amit's advisor had told Marinda that if it went too long to fake labor.

Despite how painful having his brain smashed open so his committee could analyze it, the worst part was when they sent him out of the room for 15 minutes for them to discuss his future.  "I stood outside, pacing, trying not to eavesdrop.  Also, it was a little awkward because there was another guy walking around the 5th floor of the Physics and Astronomy building, at 6:15pm on a Friday, wearing a suit.  What are the odds?"

Finally he was asked to come back, where he got the news - HE PASSED!!!

"I was exhausted..." when asked how he felt upon leaving.  "I didn't really feel like jumping for joy or really being happy, it was just nice not having to think about it for the first time in a week."

The other graduate students had a little party with a cake planned for him, and to the tune of "happy birthday" they sang "happy passing your general exam" while he blew out six candles (one for each year of graduate school - hopefully).

Make a wish!

"I was so proud of him!" was Amit's wife's response when asked how she had felt, "but I was also just so relieved to have it over with.  I loved being able to watch his presentation though - I know he's smart and we talk about his work at home, but since I'm no longer doing homework with him and such it was a nice reminder of just HOW smart this guy really is!"

Now we switch gears almost instantly to Marinda's preparation for her harp concert - which was the day after Amit's general exam.

All week Marinda had been working with her students, working on her own song, and preparing logistically all the little things that went into a harp concert.  "The actually work of putting on the harp concert wasn't that stressful because I was putting it on with another music teacher.  What was really stressful was trying to get my students ready and prepared both with their pieces and mentally to get through whatever was going to happen."

The morning came, and Marinda's nerves were on edge.  Collecting herself, she went outside to go pick up a couple of things she still needed.  However, while walking to the car a neighbor's dog saw her and ran to attack.  This was not an "oh pet me!" bark, this thing charged at her teeth bared, back ridged, ready to jump on her.  She froze and began to walk backwards as fast as she could (she's 8 months pregnant, what was she going to do?) when the three owners who were in the driveway came and got their dog in time. They said sorry and put him on a leash and nonchalantly explained that he doesn't like red shirts.  Marinda went back to the house and got Amit to drive her instead.

Dispite monstrous creature seeking Marinda's blood, the concert went really well!  It was combined with a friend's violin/viola concert and there were 7 harp students and 5 violin/viola students, making it a nice 40 minute concert (as opposed to 12 minutes which was the length of Marinda's concert last year.)  Here are a few highlights and funny stories.

Before the concert, one of Marinda's students, an adorable 7 year old girl brought her a bouquet of flowers that was about as big as the girl herself.  Suddenly Marinda turned around and *poof* flowers appeared!

During the concert a little girl (the granddaughter of one of Marinda's older students) decided it was her turn to perform.  So she ran up to one of the harps and started playing.  It was terrifying, but because she was little it was also cute and fun.  We at the Heb aren't really sure at what age that stops being funny.  I guess we'll have to see what our reaction is next year when this happens.

On to Marinda's performance.  Right before her performance Luke started freaking out and kicking her, but she persevered and performed, because the show must go on, right?  The fact that it was 100 degrees in the room making her hands sweaty didn't help either.  But in spite of all this she ended up doing a great job!  Just a couple minor mistakes, but she had a strong finish.  But don't take our word for it, here's the video of her performance (apologies if the recording is shaky - by this time Amit had been holding up the camera for nearly an hour.  Why don't we have a tripod again?)

One interesting thing that happened was that after the concert this crazy old guy (probably one of the student's grandpa) started asking questions about the harp like "What type of wood is this?" and "What's the wall thickness of the wood?"  Apparently he thinks he can make a better pedal harp himself than what Lyon and Healy can make.  Not a little lap harp for fun, a PEDAL harp.

After enduring to the end of the week we rewarded ourselves and saw the Avengers movie.  We both liked it.  It had a good mix of action and humor.  Afterwards we had dinner at Red Robin as a way to cap off our triumphal week.

We're tired, but looking forward to this week where we're planning on doing not much more than resting and putting together the nursery.  Hope you all have a great week!