As a retired bureaucrat and passing my free time in USA with children, I was thinking of pursuing higher studies through distance learning. At this point of time, I was connected with AIU through the internet. I went through their course structure for Doctorate in Engineering, and I was convinced that this could be the appropriate course for me, considering my age and my requirements. I contacted Admin Counsellor Mr Roberto and decided to join the course.Although I was thinking of taking the course in a leisurely manner, once I was into the course, I decided to put my full effort in it. Against the basic requirement of one course per month, I went on clearing the phases in shortest possible time. For this, I chose many courses of my interest and also matching with my long career of 30 years of teaching and managing the construction projects. This enabled me to progress at a faster pace.I completed the coursework requirement and moved on to phase IV. I chose my thesis proposal on a subject of road safety management in which I was working for more than two decades. Once my proposal was accepted, I decided to move to Nepal for data collection and thesis writing. It was easy for me because the topics was a case study of Road safety management of Nepal roads. The data collection work is not easy in the developing part of the world. It was time consuming to get both the Primary and secondary data. I requested AIU to give me a support letter requesting the authority to make the data available to me. Once the email option for filling the questionnaires was saturated, I personally approached the experts for filling up the form. The interview part of data collection went smoothly, and the respondents were quite supportive on the noble cause of road safety. So the data collection was accomplished with reasonable amount of time and effort. I was in constant touch with my tutor and Supervisor and was reporting the progress in fortnightly basis.I started analyzing the data and writing the thesis simultaneously. The thesis was ready for submission, and I submitted it to the university for grading. It was approved and I set the earliest available time for Thesis defense. During the thesis defense, there was one funny moment where the defense started one hour late. One can imagine how I was passing that one hour of time, ready for the defense and no body ready to hear. Finally, the panel came up and I defended it successfully. It seems that the panel forgot about the recent change of Day Light Saving time. I asked the panel coordinator regarding the delay, but he moved on saying that the time is as per scheduled. I didn’t debate further but was annoyed.During my course work, both my Tutor and Advisor were very cooperative and helpful. Whenever there was some ambiguity or confusion, I would write to them, and they would promptly reply me. One more memorable incident was that I was not happy with one of my grading. I discussed with my tutor about it, but I could not find a way out to better the grade.I tried to complete the 80 Credits of the course in a very short time which made me quite busy. This has limited me to participate in many of the university activities. I could not attend the webinars because there was a huge difference of time between Nepal and New York. But I did utilize the interaction with the university in other possible ways.I was thoroughly satisfied with my attachment with the university from admission to thesis defense. I would like to thank everybody from the university in this connection and would like to collaborate with the university in the future, in the capacity of the Alumni and beyond.