 Hello, I'm Mike Solomon, the Dean of Rackham Graduate School. I would like to begin by congratulating you on reaching this next phase of your academic career, and by acknowledging the tremendous amount of work that went into reaching it. I know that qualifying exams can be a trying process, and I hope each of you takes a moment to appreciate all that you have accomplished by achieving candidacy. Reaching this milestone is demanding at any time, given the many responsibilities of Rackham students, but is especially impressive in light of this year's extraordinary interconnected challenges. I admire your commitment, your resilience, and your willingness to adjust to alternative modes of research and scholarship that this time has demanded. I meet lots of alumni as part of my role as Dean. I often ask them about their experiences as a doctoral student. Nearly everyone has a story to tell about their qualifying exam. Turns out I have my own qualifying exam story as well. Passing these exams was a close call for me. There was a research part and an independent study project. I misfired on the independent project and messed up a theoretical development on the research exam. After the exam, the committee gave me some feedback that 25 years later, still smarts. Exam put me on the back foot, and I spent a few months recovering from it. I mention this now because candidacy is a happy milestone. I want to clearly acknowledge that whatever path you follow to this point might have been difficult, especially given the challenging year that we've experienced. What is regularly challenging therefore might have been made more so now. The exams you took are unique life experiences, and if your experience was difficult, that is very common. What helped me get through my difficult experience was to get some perspective by taking some time to focus on my own well-being. My advisor also really helped me by identifying some small yet concrete steps that I could take to start moving forward again. As you look ahead to an exciting new phase and the skills that you would develop now as a candidate, you should know that Rackham has supports in place to help you along the way. I would like to highlight two of them here for you now. One is about mentoring. An important part of Rackham's mission is to improve the quality of the graduate student experience, and faculty mentors play a crucial role in that experience. On the Rackham website, you can find a guide for students called How to Get the Mentoring You Want. In addition, our Mentoring Others results in excellence, or more committee, is Rackham's Faculty Committee on Mentoring. They engage with faculty and graduate students to foster these important conversations. The committee holds several mentoring plan workshops each year, and I encourage you to look on our website to learn more about them and to talk with your faculty mentor about attending one of them together. You can also find additional resources ranging from mentoring plan templates to links to other support across campus on the Rackham website. The second area I would like to highlight is career development. Rackham offers many opportunities for you to assess your career values, your interests, and your skills, and to actively explore fields of interest through networking, mentoring, professional experiences, and internships. We also hold several annual career development programs including a workshop called Designing Your Life in our upcoming PhD Connections Career Conference, which begins April 5th. Rackham also regularly offers workshops on topics such as preparing CVs and cover letters for the job search, as well as hosting alumni career conversations. As you may be aware, the university is set to further expand its research operations later this week on April 1st. In addition, we are hopeful that increasing vaccinations and decreasing virus transmission rates will allow for a more normal campus life by the fall as you move forward as a candidate. As this occurs, please take advantage of the resources and avenues support I've mentioned. Our celebration today is both a milestone and a doorway. As you move into this coast canisee phase, there are plenty of new opportunities awaiting you. I therefore both congratulate you on a job well done and wish you well on this next step on your path to PhD. Thank you and congratulations.