I had a brief scare toward the end of last semester. I had not heard back from my advisor about the suitability of my latest proposal draft. I went to see him to ask him to sign the papers for a second extension (decidedly NOT a good thing) and he seemed surprised adn told me my proposal was ready for my committee and I should look to schedule my comprehensive exam and proposal defense. That solved one problem, sort of. Luckily the wonderful folks in the graduate student office said that if I could defend by the start of teh spring semester I could avoid the pain of a second extension.

At which point one of my committee members had to withdraw because of scheduling conflicts. So ever since the 15th of December or so I’ve been scrambling to find a new committee member, as well as study for my comps on the assumption that my committee members will be content with my proposal as is and will accept my reading list. My advisor is out of town until the 14th, so I’m pretty much on my own. Based on his recommendation, I’ve asked the CS Department chair to sit on my committee based on his own research but I have not heard back from him yet. But it’s only two days after New Year’s, so I’m still optimistic.