I have passed the technical qualifying exam and research qualifying exam, been in residence for at least four semesters, taken courses and written a master's thesis, satisfied the teaching requirement, and completed the minor program. I will be turning in my doctoral thesis proposal this week, which is the last of the requirements other than the actual thesis and defense. My doctoral committee will consist of Alan, John Fisher, Polina Golland, and Josh Tenenbaum. The road towards graduation in terms of these hurdles is pretty straightforward, but looking at things at that scale misses the tortuosity of the path at the end.
For no particular reason, I have been following the progress of the tennis player Somdev Dev Varman over the last several weeks. He turned professional after his college career concluded with back-to-back NCAA championships. Related in some manner to the royal family of Tripura, Dev Varman went out and won tournaments in Rochester, NY and Pittsburgh, PA on the Futures circuit, won an exhibition tournament in New City, NY, and qualified for and won the tournament in Lexington, KY on the Challenger circuit. As a professional he has won twenty matches and lost none. His world ranking has jumped from 797 to 661 to 565 to 345. This week he is playing another Challenger-level tournament and will very soon be playing full ATP tour level tournaments.
As discussed by Bill Simmons and James Blake, the ranking system is very definitive and players know exactly what they need to do. (Doing so is not easy and requires a lot of hard work.) Many non-research-related careers don't per se have rankings, but the path is about finding the light at the end of the tunnel; it is not about finding the tunnel, as it is with research. With the thesis proposal now written, I think I have found the tunnel and am now looking for the light at the end of it.
