The Summer 2006 Part-II

So, that was the happy ending to the fun cricket tournament of ISA-KSU's 2006 edition. But the real heat of the summer was even less than a week for me. The tournament ended on 18th June and my PhD prelim was on 23rd June. Although every second was priceless for me from the prelim point of view, I still managed to go to Rusty's in the evening and had a nice time there with the winning team and some close friends. Althought I wanted to study a lot that night, it ended celebrating the victory and another priceless night gone before the prelim. As far as I remember I became as serious as possible from the next morning and did not move from my laptop and set of papers listed to be read before the exam date. The more and more I read, the more and more insecure I started to become. It was becoming difficult to judge how much is sufficient for the test. And the scary descriptions and questions I had heard from my fellow PhD-mates, who had already take the prelim, were not helping my desperation to read more. And the feeling of I should have started earlier as always with all the tests was even more this time. Somehow I realised that it's not possible to know everything in some mere days and drew a line of what to finish before the test. Having done that I managed to go over whatever was there on my list by the late night of 22nd June. Finally the death day came and I got up early in the morning on 23rd. To test my preparation just asked a few questions to myself to find that I'm all set to screw myself in front of my committee. So, tried to look over all the material once more for the last time and went to the test hall with a blank mind. The meeting started some 10 minutes later than it was scheduled. I started very nervously, got settled in after around 10 minutes. The correct answers to the first few questions of the committee helped calming my nerves down and I was starting to feel confident. So, after about 30 minutes I realised I'm doing good. But then came the toughest part and I got confused for a couple of simple questions and the committee really grilled me over those things. Luckily common sense prevailed on me soon and I could sail over those questions. After this phase I could feel that the storm is almost over and the committee members are also getting tired. So, I finished my presentation in about an hour and 45 minutes. Then the committee asked me to step out for a few minutes so that they can decide on their verdict. Although I think I should have felt the most nervous at this time, to my surprise I was okay and there was a sense of feeling that I have done it. It did not take much time for my committee to raise the curtain and in less than 2 minutes my major Prof Dee came out to congratulate me and then I re-entered the room and all the committe members congratulated me on successfully clearing my preliminary examination for PhD. I don't think I can describe the sense of relief I got at that moment and rathare than shaking hands with my committe members I felt like hugging them. Soon I got a letter from Grd School saying that I have been admitted by the Graduate School to candidancy for a doctoral program in Biochemistry. So, after 2 years at K-State I became sure that I'm going to get a PhD.

Tha last and 3rd part will come soon........

The Summer 2006

Before starting to write about my summer' 2006, I must say that it is Sunil and Praveen's blog that has really inspired me to write something. But still writting about the summer in the end of September shows my laziness. Anyway now that I'm somehow managing to write here, I should start writting why the summer 2006 is really special for me. To start with, in the beginning last summer was really scary as I had to take my PhD prelims. Then there was the regular ISA Cricket tournaments. So, the main concern in the beginning was time. Whether I would be able to manage time with lab, cricket in the afternoon and study for the prelims. So, we started with the Fun cricket tournament and on paper everyone thought ours is the best team to win the tournament. To be honest, we felt we are good, but a couple of other teams are also not bad and at least 3 teams have equal chance of winning. But we managed to loose a match in the qualifying round against my roommates' team and that loss actually brought us back into senses that we should take our opponents seriously. Till then we were always kidding around in the field. So, we took the tournament seriously, had a kind of first proper team discussion and managed to beat others and move to the final. Now again in the final our opposition was Mazhar's team ( The only team we lost to in the league stage). So, this time we were fully prepared and had a proper plan to execute. Luckily even after loosing the toss we were asked to bat as we would have preferred. And we got the best start against the strong team. We had discussed that around 50 runs is competitive and 60 is definitely in the safer side. And to our surprise we scored 70 runs in the stipulated 6 overs and not a single wicket was lost. Everyone clicked and I was not even required to bat. Sumit who was the opener with Sanket came back not out at the end of 6 overs facing only 7 balls (The tournamnet rule allows you to play only 12 balls). This speaks volumes of our good luck that day. So, after having 70 runs on the board both we and our opponents were convinced that it's an one sided affair and there is no chance for them with the kind of bowling we have. And that is exactly what happened and I felt the opposition gave up even before the start. We were hugely relieved to learn that we managed to do justice to our pre-tournamnet favorite tag and came out as champions with flying colors. We had a very good crowd by Manhattan ISA standards for the final match even at the scorching heat of about 95 F. The victory was sweeter for the fact that we did not have a single supporter in the crowd and they were pin drop silent right from the beginning as our batsmen and bowlers never gave them a chance to open their mouth. Although we would have liked a little more sound!!!!!!

To be continued...........