The Candidate

On May 12th, I successfully completed my Oral Qualifying Exam and will now advance to "candidacy" in my Ph.D. program, which means that from now on I'm what's called "ABD," or All But Dissertation. Yay! Does this mean I'm close to being finished? Not really. It just means that now I can concentrate on my own research, so this summer I'm planning archival and field work on the Kaweah Co-operative Commonwealth site down near Three Rivers, CA.

And, as I'm still feeling celebratory, a bunch of us went to the Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker factory tour yesterday, where we sampled locally made chocolate and saw how beans become bars. Tasty! Perhaps the most fun you can have in a disposable paper hairnet.