[physcab]

When I was in graduate school taking my qualifying examination, I stood in front of my 5 advisors answering their questions one by one about my dissertation project (pre-defense). The first time I failed. They questioned me for 2 hours on every detail of my project and grew impatient every time I gave them a hand-wavy answer. The second time I passed. The questioning lasted 15 minutes. I had spent the previous 3 months since the first failure reading every single book on my domain atleast twice. I was also angered (as were they) the first time when they asked simple questions and the answer just didn't bubble to the top of my memory. I think the second time around, they were almost freaked out by my eagerness.