The Qualifying Exam

For context: The qualifying exam (QE) is a three-hour oral exam with a committee of five professors that we take in the chemistry PhD program. It’s usually taken in the second year, but I took it as a third-year student because my research was delayed due to lab construction. Because of the importance placed on this exam, we don’t go through a thesis defense when we finish our PhD. My exam was on March 19th.

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It’s exactly ten days after my QE.

The build up to it was over a year long. I watched my peers go through the freak-out phase, the figure-it-out phase, the get-it-done phase, then at long last the glorious free-of-this-shit phase. And as I watched I got more anxious, knowing that I couldn’t reach that endpoint for another year.

I started studying this fall. I didn’t fully know how to do it, though. I made a list of everything that I thought was important to my project that I didn’t know. It was a long list. Kyle, my advisor, scheduled a QE practice during a group meeting in mid-November, and I tried to knock everything off the list before then. But that same week, I gave two lectures in the graduate quantum mechanics course that I was TAing, and I felt like I had to prioritize those. So I didn’t finish the list and I shot myself in the foot by not doing so.

I left that first practice feeling shell-shocked and mortified, having demonstrated to my group and my boss how little I knew. But I met with Kyle right after, and he said that he actually thought it had gone okay. I had forgotten a few things but overall, I had shown that I knew the details of my project well. It made me feel…better, I guess, although no less terrified.

I still felt unorganized. I knew some people read through notes and books from every chemistry class they’d ever taken, but I felt reasonably confident in my basic chemistry knowledge from tutoring and TAing. I didn’t want to waste my time, but I also didn’t want my committee to pick holes through my knowledge that I didn’t know were there.

Starting in early January while doing research with a collaborator at Harvard, I went back to that list I’d made and really worked through it. I initially divided my time between general topics based on different areas I didn’t know enough about, and gave myself a week with each topic. That…sort of worked, for at least the first few weeks. I definitely started feeling more confident about the most important topics.

Two of my committee members had taught classes I’d taken, and then later I’d TAed for both those classes. I went over notes and important concepts from each, at least to the degree that I could answer questions that were connected to my research.

I also just ran through what I would say, constantly. I almost always had a dialogue going in my head of what questions I thought would come up and how I would answer them. While I think this did end up being helpful in the exam, it also might have been a contributing factor to the anxiety and imposter syndrome that rarely left me alone, especially in the month leading up to my QE.

I’ve always held myself to high standards, and from the beginning, that has made grad school difficult. I’m not great at remembering concepts, unless they fit directly into my project or something else that I think about a lot. It always seemed to take me longer to do homework than my classmates, and I never did well on written exams. In high school and sometimes in college, I felt smart. Almost never has that happened in grad school. Everything has been new, and challenging. Don’t get me wrong, I love the challenge, I love physical chemistry, and I love pushing myself to really get something that I didn’t before. I had a couple eureka moments while I was studying when all of a sudden something just clicked and it felt amazing.

But honestly, what stands out more in my mind are the moments when I hit rock bottom. I was TAing for my advisor last quarter, and he always has his TAs “preview” the exams. While taking the second midterm, I completely choked. Things looked vaguely familiar but my brain could not process anything. I couldn’t figure out what the questions were asking. All I could think was “How the fuck do you think you’re smart enough to take a qualifying exam if you can’t answer these easy questions?” Which is the perfect mantra if you want to end up having a panic attack in a bathroom stall while you’re supposed to be finishing an exam.

Why all these low moments? I asked myself that a lot before the QE, and the answer was usually angry and full of expletives. The take-away was that I did not think I was good enough to pass the exam. I was terrified that my committee would see immediately that I don’t actually know anything that I should. I know, I think, exactly where this imposter syndrome comes from. There were two academically traumatic events in college; one handled well, the other handled by, you guessed it, having a panic attack in a bathroom stall. And in front of my dorm. And in my bed. I don’t know if my anxiety has fostered the imposter syndrome or the other way around, but they’re both there, either lurking or beating my brain into a bloody pulp.

So to fight my doubts, I studied more. I did QE practices. I could have been more organized, but I covered everything that I wanted to. And my QE got closer, and the feeling of driving straight towards a cliff increased. My QE was on a Monday, and the weekend before was…it’s hard to fully explain. I was studying because that was calming me more than not studying. I was going back through things that I wanted to review, I was going over some new stuff that I’d realized late in the game might be relevant, I was just reading and thinking and trying to enjoy it. And then putting my head down every few minutes while my stomach lurched and my heart raced and I tried hard to just breathe and not pass out.

The night before my QE, I actually slept well. I am amazed by this in hindsight, because I think it was the only night between January and my QE that I didn’t wake up sweating from a terrible stress dream that involved some kind of mortification and punishment for a terrible QE performance. But the morning of, I was just muted and somewhat grateful. I was just ready to be done. Pass or fail, it would be easier. (A fail means you get a chance to re-take it.) I went out for a run with Chena and had to stop to walk a lot when the stomach cramps got to be too much. I felt like I was going to puke. It was like the first few miles of a race, except I couldn’t get through it by just continuing to put one foot in front of the other. I had to perform. I slowly finished my run, got back home, tried and failed to eat, and then took a long, hot shower.

Maya drove me to school and we chatted about gossip and plans for the weekend, just whatever. Just not the QE. The clock slowly clicked closer to 2. I got to school, printed copies of my QE report for my committee, and started setting up the room. I was just trying to breathe, and that focus helped. I was actually feeling okay. Confident might have been a stretch but I was trying very hard to convince myself of a degree of confidence. I just had to get through 3 hours.

The exam itself is hard to write about because I don’t feel like it went well. I passed, and I am very grateful to have this task off my back, but I am not happy with my performance. I misunderstood questions, I didn’t stand strong when questioned about details that I knew…I started off by answering the very first question terribly, leading the committee down a deep rabbit hole. They were asking about things that I knew, but in the moment I was not able to process their questions. It sucked, frankly, and threw me off my game. I got through a fair amount of my presentation, but they didn’t ask the questions that I thought they would. I didn’t get to talk about my side project, which I actually felt very confident about, but the first half of the exam ran long and before I even got to that part, they had sent me out of the room for a break.

Waiting in the hall, I was pissed. I finally realized what they were asking about initially and I knew exactly how to answer. Zach, my lab mate, came by and I explained what had happened. He sympathized, and even sprinted down to our office to get me ibuprofen (because with the stress, I was dealing with the worst period I’ve ever had in my life and without consistent ibuprofen, the cramps were so bad that walking was almost impossible, sorry/not sorry if that’s TMI).

I went back into the exam room for the second half, and they all just went down the line and asked one or two questions. I don’t remember now which questions came at this point versus earlier, but I remember this weird feeling that I had gotten out of hell and then had been tricked back into it; I’d spent a few minutes chatting with Zach, and now I was back with more demons to face. But the questions fed into each other and before I knew it, they’d sent me out into the hall again so they could deliberate.

And deliberate.

I just stood there, numb and telling myself over and over that it didn’t matter what they said. The hard part was over. The months of hating myself, the sleepless nights, they were over.

My committee came out of the room after 15 minutes and said congratulations. They all shook my hand and then left. I went in, alone, shut the door, and cried for a minute. No tears. Just sobs- I didn’t have any control, they just ripped out.

I cleaned up the room, told my friends, labmates, family. I was happy. Right?

I couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to go back and try again. I’d passed. I was done, I could move on with my PhD. But even now, ten days later, I’m mad about how I did. I came off looking like an idiot when I knew more than I let on. I let the committee think I was unsure of myself when I wasn’t. I just didn’t want to show my backbone. I was afraid of them and afraid of being wrong.

I couldn’t sleep that night. My mouth felt dry, my head was spinning, I kept rethinking my committee’s questions. I slept worse than most nights leading up to the QE.

The next day, biking to school, my hearing got fuzzy and vision went a bit dark. I pulled over.

This kept happening. For two days after, every time my heart rate would go up, I would need to sit down. Which sucks, because all I wanted to do was run. But my body, my brain…I was so shaken. I was having trouble stringing together sentences properly. I wanted to exercise and do lab work but I just…couldn’t.

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Even writing about it made me angry and jittery. I’m just now picking this back up, now well over a month after my QE.

I’m not over it, but I’m happier now that I’ve been able to move on with my life. I’ve been doing a lot of lab work, reading the literature purely for enjoyment, TAing an intro to quantum class and getting undergrads excited about physical chemistry (well, I’m trying, but having fun doing it). I’ve been running a decent amount and raced a half marathon last weekend. But the feeling that I could have done better lingers. The shakiness from the days after the QE has come back a few times, leaving my heart in my throat.

I so badly wanted to prove myself, wanted to rise to my own absurdly high expectations that were constantly at war with my imposter syndrome, that my body was ready to revolt. Why I put that pressure on myself is complicated and frustrating, but I think I could have lessened it by changing my preparation a bit. (Seeing a mental health provider wouldn’t have been a bad idea, either.) For anyone else going through an exam like this, here’s what I’d do differently:

• Start practicing the intro around 6 months before. This is where you deliver the motivation and background for your project. Present this to other people, and let them ask questions, but also make sure you have a solid 10 minute intro dialed in early on.
• Have a study group. The times I spent studying with others were very productive and more fun than being stuck in my own head.
• Also around 6 months before, come up with a study schedule for yourself and for your group and STICK TO IT. You won’t know exactly when your QE will be, but at least plan out which topics to cover over the first 3 months of studying. You don’t have to study constantly, but an hour a night or a few longer sessions a week will definitely help with confidence levels.
• Prioritize understanding your project. Practice writing and speaking about what you’re doing beyond just the intro, make this part of your weekly study time. You’re much more likely to get a not-pass if you don’t know your project well than if you don’t know something unrelated.
• Just like the long run when prepping for a race, QE practices are vital. They don’t have to be every week, but I highly recommend starting early and with diverse groups of people. I wish I’d had more practices in front of people outside of my lab. Scheduling 2 or 3 “dress rehearsal” practices in the month before the QE is great, but consistent, more casual practices starting maybe 4 months before will leave you much more prepared.
• You don’t know something? Ask. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out things on my own when asking someone else would have been a much better use of my time. Solving your own problems is great, but at some point your time isn’t worth it.

Above all, remember that you’re not alone. I obviously struggled a lot, but talking to my peers helped. My hope is that by sharing this, I can help others going through this or through similar academic hurdles. If you’re reading this and need someone to talk to, please reach out. Even if it’s a phone call mid-panic attack in a bathroom stall- I’m here for you.