Peace, Love, and Lutefisk: Adventures i Norge

The end has officially come, and I can now call myself a "master"! Monday I had my oral exam, and it went well. Stian and Elisa came to the defense at first the professors had to make sure that it was a public event (I guess people don't usually come!) After they were allowed in, the defense began. I summarized my thesis and told them what I would have done differently if I had time. Then the panel had their chance. I had a great panel, which consisted of my advisor, an examiner from the University of Tromsø, and an external examiner from Finland. They asked a lot of challenging questions and brought up a lot of points that I basically agreed with. After about an hour, the questioning was over and they told me they were impressed with the thesis! They said it was creative, elloquently written, and addressed important issues. It was so great to finally receive a little academic encouragement. We even started talking about PhD programs, and they encouraged me to think about publication and a PhD. So exciting!

The day after the oral exam, we celebrated as our whole program had a graduation ceremony with a nice dinner and lots of laughs throughout the evening. The highlight was Stian giving "a student's view" of the program.

We laughed about doing almost the exact same thing (with the same fish soup) two years earlier. It's been a fun ride, but I think we're all ready to be done with the program. Norway on the other hand is a bit more difficult to think about leaving. I've made such great friends that it will be hard to leave in September.



After our class party Tuesday night, I got up early and left for the exotic city of Kirkenes next to the Russian border in the far Northeast corner of Norway. I'm excited to meet my family this evening here in Kirkenes and then take the boat around the Northern coast of Norway back to Tromsø! I've spent the afternoon in Kirkenes and well...it was underwhelming. Kind of a sad town. I had the map of the center of town and was excited to see all the museums. About 5 minutes later I had.



I was so surprised at how the distances between places in town where almost to scale with the map I had. Fortunately, we will be leaving tomorrow at noon to start a 1 and half day trip around Northern Norway! It will be so great to see them and celebrate the end of a master's degree as well as my brother Paul's graduation and my sister Andrea's graduation. So much to celebrate, and I'm glad we can do it here in Norway! So...time to close the master degree chapter. On to the next adventure.