A rewind before the finish line

With my one exam of the semester behind me, I am all but complete with my fourth year of grad school, and have about a year left before I defend and ultimately receive my doctoral degree.

I met with one of my classmates and friends for coffee after our exam, at the local shop The Golden Roast Coffee (I’m linking for any Knoxville natives reading my posts — it’s one of the best shops around with a cozy work environment and varied menu). Over the course of two and a half hours or so, our conversation spanned a wide range of topics, most of them related to our time in grad school, but also some things such as family and our experiences as undergraduate students. I could have easily talked to her all day, but alas life moves on and we are both neck-deep in research, so we parted ways, both caffeinated and happy. Then I proceeded to make substantial progress on writing code for my advisors.

In any case, now I tell the story of how I got to this point in my graduate program, summarizing what I have accomplished (and also some curveballs and setbacks) since I started my applications. I’ll do this in a timeline style.

~~2019~~

February 2019: lying in bed with the flu, I got an email from the University of Tennessee with a letter that said I had been accepted into their Mathematics PhD program, also giving info on a teaching assignment and my stipend. Some pretty good news to lift me out of bed (quite literally).