Peter = ABD.

"A thesis proposal" is done. Now the rest.

Last Tuesday I successfully defended my dissertation proposal. In brief, in the third year of the PhD we are expected to write a dissertation proposal (takes about a year). Then, after finding two professors that sponsor the proposal, one has to defend it to a committee consisting of four professors. I did so last Tuesday. It was great to spend well over an hour with four very smart people discussing solely my dissertation. So, now I am “All But Dissertation”. That is, now it starts: I actually have to write that thing.

Wave of work
The days before my defense I avoided not-dissertation-related work. So, after celebrating Tuesday evening, I opened my Gmail Wednesday morning and clicked on my starred emails and almost fell over backwards. A brief summary of what’s ahead before I leave to Europe and Africa on May 25:

• DRC network project (with Neelan): Finish games and protocol. Meet with several professors to make sure it makes sense. Run pilot at NYU lab. Revise our IRB application.
• DRC impact evaluation (with Macartan, Caroline and Raul): Finish fill-out forms so that the field teams can geo-locate over 5,500 villages. Clean baseline survey. Present the evaluation design at CAPERS this Friday. And lots (lots!) of other preparation as Raul and I will be in the field for over 6 months.
• CSDS (with Liz and Neelan): Build resource webpage. Write (sampling) code in R.
• Sierra Leone network project (with Neelan): Finish protocol and survey questions. Meet with several professors to make sure it makes sense. Meeting at IRC's HQ downtown. Get IRB approval.
• Logistics: Get Visas. After putting it in the washing machine (story here), I also need a new passport. Buy lots of stuff: flights, netbook, Kindle, external harddrive, etc. Sublease apartment.
• Voix des Kivus (with Macartan): Write expansion protocol for our Technical and Field Coordinators (we are expanding from 4 to tens of villages). Macartan and I still need to get a lot of paid-out-of-our-own-pocket money back; so several hours with receipts ahead. May 18-19: USAID meeting in Washington. Get several batteries (designed by Columbia's engineering department) from Tanzania to our villages in the DRC, so that people don't have to walk for hours to charge their phones.
• Dissertation: Formally work out my dissertation's mechanisms. Get IRB approval. Share proposal widely (policymakers, academics, people in the DRC, etc.).

All great stuff!