I submitted the last of the exams this morning. Final stats: 21,419 words on 96 double-spaced pages. 5 of those pages were screencaps and there were probably about 10 pages of bibliographies, so I’d say roughly 80 pages of argument written over the course of 78 hours*. That seems about right for the wordcount. This was totally unexpected, as I’ve considered myself a slow writer for most of my grad school career. I was just hoping to hit the rumored minimums for each set, which were supposedly 2-3 pages for an in-house and 10ish for a take-home. Billie was right when she told me I’d be surprised by what would come out when I actually sat down to do these.

All told, I did learn a lot from the process. The questions pushed me, and I have more and different thoughts about the subjects now than when I started. I think I have bad drafts of three papers. I know more about where some of my weak spots are, and have got some reading mapped out for the three weeks between now and my orals. Some moments of the writing and thinking were fun, but as a whole this was generally not much fun at all.

Bottom line: I'm glad I did it and I'm especially glad this part is over with. Now I just need to pass. And then pass the orals.

*Fewer production hours, actually, since I don’t think I ever wrote for more than 12 hours straight. But I also sleep-wrote, so there were more than 12 hours of thinking time for each take-home.

Update, 11/28: Just got notification that I passed the writtens!