Giao passed her qualifying exam. Huzzah! In these exams, we naïve graduate students muster the cojones to stand in front of the world's experts in our fields and deliver to them a small two-hour oral treatise over the project we have in mind for our Ph.D. thesis. They, in turn, eat some grapes and deliberate over whether or not we have sufficiently mastered the material necessary to carry out said project.

It is perhaps the most frightening ordeal that a graduate student suffers through, because your committee members often have been working in the field longer than you have been alive, and you must demonstrate competency to said experts while avoiding at all costs slips of the tongue and demonstrable mistruths.

When you wake up the next morning, it's as if a weight has been lifted from your chest, back, head and torso. After passing, the student may leave the University at his or her discretion with a Master's degree. However, at that point, the hard part is over: all you have to do now is do the work!

UPDATE: Derek Greenfield just passed his quals this week too! Congratulations to Derek and Giao!