A major milestone in the pursuit of a doctoral degree is the comprehensive exam process. For me, this process is now complete. The next step is the prospectus defense. I will be spending the summer preparing the prospectus documentation with the hopes of defense in Fall. I can honestly state that the process was not pleasant and I am extremely happy that is it over.The summer will also allow me to re-organize my collections in Mendeley and really get started on the process. My primary concern now is the time frame as well as setting up milestones for deliverables. The issue with the dissertation process is that there are no really defined deliverables. At this point I need to come up with some form of schedule to keep on a writing track.
At the same time, I need to prepare two courses for Fall. The first is a research methods course, one that has been taught forever, but this time it will be on campus. I would like to make the course as least confusing as possible for the undergrads. The second course is one on organized crime. Traditionally this would revolve around the Italian mafia, but I want to expose students to many more of the organized crime groups worldwide. I had the hardest time finding a text that I liked, and ultimately decided on journal articles and government information (FBI, DEA, Interpol, CIA) to provide the reading materials. I am really looking forward to this course.
The final project for summer is a revamp of my cybercrime course. I have used two different texts and they were both mostly good readers, but the order in which the information was presented was always a little off for me. I decided that I have enough notes, class projects, and former participation to really make a revamp work. I am laying out the new schedule and calendar now and I hope to be complete in about two weeks.
All in all this is going to be a busy and great summer, but the stress of comps is over, and I am happy to be ABD.
