{ 2010 09 15 }

The defense drew first blood

Literally, it did.

Right before I started speaking, I brushed up against the edge of the podium, opening up my arm to bleed freely during the presentation.  How’s that for sacrificial symbolism?

The defense itself went fine; I was exactly on time (20 minutes) with no major embarrassments in anything I said or did (except, of course, for the whole blood thing).  My dress was not tucked into my underwear.  Phew.

The questions were not unlike what I had predicted to Paul the night before, when he pleasantly listened to my presentation AND (this is a big, important and) suffered through my thought process about what I’d left out of the presentation (what I’d set UP for questions) and what questions I was expecting.

Yes, these things are really thought out.

So, I answered questions and listened to discussion, and took some notes.  The things you’d expect.  There were no big surprises and parts of the discussion were really fun, in that academic-geeky-love-research sort of way.

I was asked to leave for “deliberation” and spent about 3 minutes in the hallway where everyone asked why the cat had mauled me that morning and left me bleeding openly through my defense (now they know the evils of the podium).  After a few minutes of people saying good job, my committee chair came out to say, “Congratulations, Doctor!” and invite me back in.

“We were having a really great conversation, Holly, and we wanted you to join in.”

Hearing this is much better than, “We’re bringing you back in to talk about the extensive revisions we feel you need to do.”

In short, I have to add a table to my dissertation before turning it into the Dean for binding and copy-writing.  That’s REALLY NOT BAD.  In the scope of things they could have asked me to do, this is sort of the academic equivalent of coloring in the picture before turning it in.

One would think that I’m filled with relief, and it’s true that it feels wonderful to be through this, though I’m really not sure yet.  Maybe it just takes a few days to sink in.

The defense is done.  Done.

Posted by holly on Wednesday, September 15th, 2010, at 2:09 pm, and filed under Issues.

Follow any responses to this entry with the RSS 2.0 feed.

You can post a comment, or trackback from your site.