Just tell me what to do and when to do it

So I'm trying to become a PhD candidate. In order to be admitted to candidacy, I have to pass my qualifying exams over my major and minor fields. Problem is, here at UF the process for said exams is cloaked in mystery and secrecy and the more people you ask to explain it, the more confused you get. You start to get the sneaking suspicion that qualifying exams might involve small animal sacrifice atop a Mayan temple, after which you may or may not get asked questions about US history. But I've got a secret weapon: my advisor, who is brilliant at cutting through the bullsh*t and finding out what really needs to happen. And she and I thought we had a pretty good handle on the whole exam thing. But yesterday we found out that we were wrong and that, in effect, the exams that I'll be taking in one month's time are markedly different than we had expected. So yeah. That's fun.