I did a Ph.D. in Classics, and I had the exact same feeling of "Oh, right, I remember that." This form of exam was the last part of our A exams (A exams => afte

I did a Ph.D. in Classics, and I had the exact same feeling of "Oh, right, I remember that." This form of exam was the last part of our A exams (A exams => after coursework but before being allowed to start a thesis; B exam => dissertation defense). Hadi Jorati's[1] review sums it up for me: "as soon as they feel you know something they will move to something else!" They sent me out of the room to discuss whether or not I passed. The door stayed closed long enough that I became pretty nervous, but it turned out that two of them were arguing about what they wanted to set as my dissertation topic. By the time they called me back in, I was a wreck. (I paid them back by choosing neither of those two topics.) [1] http://www.math.princeton.edu/graduate/generals/jorati_hadi2.txt http://www.math.princeton.edu/graduate/generals/jorati_hadi2...