I successfully defended my comprehensive examinations and have become a Ph.D. candidate! A huge thank you to my committee members: Dr. Dominik Stecuła, Dr. Mike Slater, Dr. Hillary Shulman, and Dr. R. Kelly Garrett. I was able to dive deep into questions about political ideology, epistemology, persuasion, and metacognition. I also survived getting COVID-19 for the first time in the middle of writing my second question.