Oral Comp Exam: PASSED!!!!!

I wanted to just take a second here, to commemorate this moment.
Today, I had my Oral Competency Exam at 9am PST.

It actually began a few minutes late, which was very fortunate since I arrived late. I left my house in Oakland at 7:30am thinking I was giving myself more than enough time to arrive by 8:45am. Joke's on me. Traffic was horrible, and to top it all off I had to pee so badly, it was actually quite painful that I had to pull off and find a bathroom (Target was my savior!)

I arrived at 9:01am, and no one even knew I didn't get there early. PHEW! Needless to say I was a bundle of nerves, shaky, feeling faint, out of breath, and sweaty (but really, aren't I always?)

The exam went about how I expected. Two faculty sitting across from me as I scribbled my notes on the Vignette before I had to begin speaking. I misspelled words that I've known how to spell for decades. When it came time to speak I made up some really interesting versions of words that I've never heard before all the while going completely blank on words I use on almost a daily basis in my field (ie: competent...ironic since I was taking a competency exam). I filled some of the silence with awkward ramblings and ill-received jokes.  I even quoted Forest Gump "and that's all I have to say about that" which also went unappreciated by my examiners.

Despite all my uncertainty, bad jokes, and ramblings I survived.
I had finished up my exam a little after 10am. I went down to the library to finish writing up an assessment report for a class (I'm still not even sure how I did school work after that!). I knew we would find out about the results via email sometime in the next couple of hours, so naturally I was refreshing my email every 5 minutes or so. at 10:55am I got the email stating: Congratulations! I didn't even read the rest of it before blurting out a loud "yeeaaaahhh I passed!!" while flailing my arms in the air right in the middle of the library. Luckily, there was a small crowd of my peers who were either waiting to take theirs or had just finished up that were there to receive my celebration and send congrats my way.

Holy mother of all that is wonderful, I still cannot believe I passed. I earned my M.S. in Clinical Psych and it is yet another hurdle I've now cleared. A BIG hurdle, one I can actually say that I feel proud of myself that I've accomplished. It's rare I actually feel like anything I do is a success, but this really does feel like one.
It was unfortunate that I had to go about my day, as though nothing was different. I still had to go to class, still had to go to Research Group, and drive an hour commute home. I suppose I did it all with my head a little higher though.

To put a cherry on my Tuesday, I got my midterm exam results back for my forensic assessment class: 97%. Today was about the most successful day I've ever had (although I'm not counting the part about backing into the iron fence in the Subway parking lot. Doh!)