Hello there! Thanks so much for visiting my site about my journey through the Ph.D comprehensive exams in English and Creative Writing. I am a 3rd year Ph.D student at the University of Missouri – Columbia and I am currently reading and studying for my comprehensive exams. My research focus areas are: the lyric essay, texts that incorporate archival research or documentation and the theory of lyric and photography. I am interested in both the lyric essay as a process and the visual aspects of the essay. This is where my reading has taken me over the past six months and will continue to take me as I work to finish my reading lists this May (fingers crossed).
When I started putting together my comprehensive exam lists and preparing for this process last year, I tried to find websites of people who had walked this path before me. Perhaps I need better googling skills (likelihood: high), but I didn’t find much help on the web. (If you have sites you’d recommend, let me know so I can link them here!) I wanted to know how to go about reading 120 texts over the span of a year. What schedule meant I was on track and how would I know when I was dawdling? What goals should I be setting each month or each day? What is the best way of taking notes so that I actually retain the knowledge I am gaining through these texts?
These are the questions I hope to answer for other graduate students embarking on their comps in a humanities program. The site is still a bit under construction here, so be sure to check back soon. If you have questions in the meantime, don’t hesitate to reach out! You can contact me through the Contact Me page at the top of the site. More soon!
Compsing 