I have the best committee btw.

So amidst all the health problems, new med allergies, migraines and all the nonsense, today I passed my PhD preliminary exams. 🙂 #ABD Looking forward to next steps (prospectus then dissertation). Thank you, dear support network. I appreciate you all.

P.S. If you’re actually curious, you can check out the written prelim below here.

Erika Sanborne’s cartoon headshot

PhD Candidate ABD Achievement Unlocked

Sanborne, Erika. (2022). Why World Leaders Should Prioritize the Well-Being of their People. Retrieved from the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/226179.

short link back to this page: erka.me/abd

best committee
clockwise: Elizabeth Heger Boyle, Erika Sanborne, Joan DeJaeghere, Phyllis Moen, Tom VanHeuvelen (This image is shared with everyone’s permission.)

WHAT’S NEXT?

For non-academic friends who are curious…

These were my preliminary exams, written and then oral. Together they comprise the approval of passage from PhD Student to PhD Candidacy. This prelim isn’t “research” though. It’s more like one hell of a book report, after reading about 800 publications. What I’m working on now is called the prospectus, which is a brief document (i.e. 20 pages + references) in which I specify my research plan for my dissertation. The prospectus includes a succinct literature review, clarifies the value that my findings would provide, and describes my plan for acquiring, managing, analyzing and sharing data and results. Later this spring, there is another hearing with my badass committee for them to consider approving my prospectus. Then dissertation begins. That is the fun part.

phd candidate
Golden Gopher
First Day of School as a PhD Student, Aug. 27, 2019
Share on:

About Erika Sanborne

Erika Sanborne has been producing media since 2014, specializing in video explainers, portraiture, green screen videography, and other digital media productions generally making cool stuff. Her latest passion in graphics is data visualization.