Viva La Viva!

Four years of work. 400 pages of writting... which later became 330 pages due to word count limits... It all boiled down to this. The final step in the PhD rollercoaster ride.

The Viva.

(aka, the interview for being accepted into the "Doctor" gentleman's club)

It started at 2pm. Dave arrived cool and collected in his office at around 1:30pm. He was imediately snatched up by his secondary supervisor Dr Cox (not the Scrubs one), to give him some last minute advise.

The conversation did not last long, as he was quickly snatched up again by Damian to start the viva. Kamila briefly said hi and good luck, but was too late for a chat. Tony and Damian were ready, the process had started.

Game on.

It began with Dave giving a brief overview of everything he had done. After which it was down to Tony and Damian to go through chapter by chapter asking all of the questions they had come up with.

"Have you considered...?"

"No."

"Why is this...?"

"No idea"

"What did you mean by...?"

"Your guess is as good as mine."

It went on like this for just over two hours, with a brief stop for water mid way.

"OK, we need to discuss things, can you go somewhere and wait."

"Sure," said Dave, "I'll be in my office."

Didn't quite work out that way, he was imediately snatched up by Trevor and Kamila.

"How did it go?"

No time to reply, Damian had come looking for him straight away. Back to the viva. Results time.

"We believe you have done more than enough for a PhD. Congradulations. You gave a very good defense. Calm, but sensible."

And with a hand shake it was confirmed.

Trevor and Kamila came in to join the merriment. Congradulations all round.

Doctor David John Natsios.

Or just "Doc DJ" for short.

CT3

Actuarial exams were designed to be tough. Only the best were expected to apply, yet out of these applicants the fail rate was still expected to be high.

CT3 - Statistics and Probability, however, had proven to be the easiest exam Dave had ever gone after. In contrast to the 3 months of work for CT1, Dave had spent no time at all on CT3. Heck, he hadn't even bothered to show up to the exam.

All he had done was send in his previous results in Stats and Probability related exams and had been granted an exemption without any fuss. The formality of sitting the exam was deemed too much of a time waste on this occasion.

1 down, 14 to go.