the PhD candidate...

this is my husband. he passed his qualifying exams yesterday! i could not be more proud of him.

for those of you who don't know, qualifying exams consist of a panel of four professors (one being your advisor and one being the "chair" of the panel). in front of these highly esteemed stanford faculty members, you must give a 20 minute powerpoint presentation about your PhD project (how you are designing it & carrying it out and why it is important), answer 10 minutes of questions about the presentation, AND then be grilled for 20 minutes by each professor on the panel about a particular subject they were selected for. for each 20 minutes, you are standing at a white board with the whole panel staring at you while the one professor keeps asking you more and more questions about a particular subject while you try to explain EVERYTHING on the white board. talk about intimidating.

after all of that, they ask you to sit outside the conference room door while they decide whether you passed or not. you have to pass your qualifying exams in order to continue on with your PhD project (if you fail the first time, you have one more chance to pass... but if you don't pass that second time... peace out). there's also a thing called "conditional pass" where they let you pass, but you either have to come back and re-take one of the 4 subjects OR you can TA a class in that subject. well, i was waiting outside the door of the conference room as well so paul wouldn't have to wait alone during those haunting 15 or so minutes. a couple of guys from paul's lab had also joined me. when paul walked out, he looked like he was in shock. he immediately said he didn't think he did as well as he should've with the thermodynamics section (what his PhD focus is in - which means that this was the subject that his own advisor had grilled him on). we all reassured him that he probably did better than he thought he did. sure enough, a few minutes later, the faculty members emerged and promptly began shaking his hand! HE PASSED!!!

all i could think was praise the Lord!!! (paul had been studying for these exams for the past few MONTHS, so i knew in my heart that there was no chance of him not passing) paul's advisor, dr. chris edwards, leaned over to the rest of us and simply stated, "go feed him beer." haha, love that guy! and so, after a brief meeting with his advisor, paul and i joined the rest of the people in his lab and walked to closest bar on campus (that's right, they have bars on campus out here on the west coast).

after 2 pitchers of fat tire, paul and i joined up with taylor and michael and traveled down to the south bay for some endless shrimp at red lobster (something paul has been longing to do the past few months!). the waitress informed us at the end of the meal that paul had ordered, in total, 12 servings of shrimp! haha! that's the hubs for ya!

anyways, just wanted to fill all of you in on the fabulousness that is paul david mobley! he never ceases to amaze me in all that he can accomplish in life!!! i love him.