An explanation about Candidature to Student

I'll just have a summary of why I decided to go to Sydney seemingly on the spur of the moment.
My one year review (a.k.a. Confirmation) was on Friday. The Confirmation is when a PhD *candidate* must submit a report summarising why they're doing a PhD. The report has to contain stuff like

• Hypothesis and Aims,
• Background justifying how you formulated the above and why your project is important,
• The Methods you'll use to solve the problem/s, and
• Your progress to date i.e. What have you been doing for the last year?

You then go in front of a panel of Academics and again justify why you're doing what you're doing and why they should let you continue with your study. They get to do things like question your aims, methods, whatever. Should they decide that everything is sound, they *Confirm* your position as a PhD from *candidate* to *student*. Should they decide it's not good enough, they can change your enrolment to Masters, or if they decide you're really crap, discontinue your study. Although I had been assured that it is almost unheard of to completely reject a student and that demotion to Masters would be unlikely given the work I had done, my lack of brilliantly concrete results did worry me (and did the many other fresh PhD candis).

As you can imagine, the last few weeks were not fun as I read and re-read many papers, stayed up late writing my report and Lit Rev, and agonised over my data and public speaking flaws. Eventually at 2:15pm on Friday, I was told the magic words "YOU ARE CONFIRMED!" and I happily had a weight off my shoulder that they can't kick me out anymore. MUHAHAHAHA!!!! So based on the above, I decided to go to Sydney for the weekend, sans le travail, sans les inquiétudes, and celebrate. I was originally just going to get drunk in Melbourne, but Cam pointed out it was Mardi Gras weekend and I should get out of the city instead. And that brings me to my Sydney blogs :-)