[mctavjb9]

Definitely my experience. I still have vivid nightmares about the general exam more than 10 years later. It was an 3 day x 8 hours per day written test with no breaks. If you wanted to eat, you had to bring food with you into the test room. Then there was the dreaded oral inquisition. Although I didn't appreciate it at the time, having survived the abject misery of the first 2 years of a physics Ph.D., everything else has seemed manageable in comparison. A few years ago, they changed the format of the written exam to a single 8 hour day. My thesis defense was a total cakewalk. Scheduling it late on a Friday afternoon was probably the single smartest thing I ever did in grad school.