The best four words

On Monday, I was told by my first reader that my project was approved by him and ready to be sent to the second reader. I immediately sent the file over, thinking this would be settled quickly. After all, wasn't this just a formality?

Ha! Nope. Not so much. On Tuesday, I received an e-mail that was probably two pages long with comments and questions. I was floored. I had less than a week to go before the deadline, and some comments were about "needing to interview more companies", "reinforcing the analysis", etc.

Most of the comments were relevant and the ones that were more or less applicable were probably hints that I hadn't addressed something clearly. After reading the e-mail over a few times, I replied to the second reader and asked her which areas I should focus on, given the state of the project. She kindly pointed me to two arguments that she thought were a bit thin, the rest being good candidates for an extension on this project by the firm itself or even another student.

Guess how I spent Tuesday and Wednesday night?

I ended up adding another five pages to the project and rewriting a few segments. I sent back the document on Wednesday night (around 1 a.m.) and nervously waited to hear back. Late Thursday night, the e-mail appeared in my Inbox:

"You're good to go."

Sweet, sweet words after so much hard work. So now, I'm wrapping up my work on the project, going through the self-review instructions for formatting and presentation, and on Monday morning, will drop off two copies to our administrator at school so she can finalize the paperwork and get the final signatures.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas :-)