I had been given to understand that the results for exams taken at the beginning of December would be published on or around January 24 this year. As I have spent most of the past week in bed with the flu, I wasn't in the mood to check how well I had done. But the past few days I've been feeling better (but not 100%), so it was time to check.
Whilst the general results page says that results have been published, my own page shows only MBA results, with the DBA results pending. Hmmm. I was not totally surprised that my results had yet to appear as this has happened to me for the last two times that I took exams. I posted a question on the 'EBS Watercooler' site, which is a general EBS (Edinburgh Business School) forum, asking whether anyone had received their IBR results. Someone answered in the affirmative.
Based on this information, I then wrote to one of the EBS examination staff, asking where my results were. Almost immediately I received a reply saying that there was a technical fault and that the results would be posted tomorrow (ie today).
This morning I got up at 7am (late for me - the Occupational Psychologist is in America at the moment so there's no reason for me to get up early) and went to the computer to check my email. There was no internet connection (fixed landline via the kibbutz), so not only could I not read my email, I also couldn't access the EBS site.
8 am - no internet connection. I fired up the mobile computer with its direct connection to the Internet (a wireless router) and logged into the EBS site. No results.
10 am - the internet connection has been restored to my computer, but the results have yet to appear. It's only 8am in Edinburgh and probably the IT staff only begin work at 9am.
2 pm - still no results.
4:45 pm - out of almost idle curiosity, I check for what I had decided would be the final time for today to see whether the results have appeared ... and indeed they have. To my surprise and relief, I have passed both exams (albeit with barely passing grades, but this doesn't matter)! This means that I have passed all three preparatory Introduction to Business Research exams and can now enter the research phase of the doctorate! It also means that I may never ever have to take an exam again (unless, of course, I decide to study for yet another degree, something which seems to be exceedingly unlikely at the moment. Who knows how I will feel in another five years).
It's very interesting comparing the breakdown of marks in the exams with my immediate impressions: I thought, for example, that I did poorly in the second half of IBR3 (statistics) whereas in fact I scored 36 (out of 50) marks on this question. On the other hand, I scored much worse on the first question than I thought I had.... All this goes to show that impressions can be misleading.
As I understand things, I will now be assigned to a mentor with whom I will work on preparing my research proposal. As I've had little to do in the past two months, I have already written a fair amount of this proposal; now I can kick it into high gear. One very important piece of information which I want is a breakdown of Priority users according to the number of licenses per site and their business sector; I have informally approached the company that owns and develops Priority for this information but have yet to have received a reply. I shall now actively seek this information. I will also have to develop the research questionnaire (which according to preliminary work which I did last year will probably be divided into two separate questionnaires), but this can wait for the mentor.
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