Well, my fellow academics, 196 pages, 48 powerpoint slides, 1 beer, 3 tequila shots, 3 buttery nipples, 2 girly rum drinks, 1 oatmeal cookie shot, and 1 evening spent in misery on the couch/ in the bathroom (big props to NA for dealing with the not-so-pleasant after-effects of defending) later.....and I'm (almost officially) a PhD!
So yes, I might have made some bad drinking decisions, but I haven't done that since I started grad school....so I don't think I'm doing so badly. Besides, now that I'm (almost officially) not a grad student anymore, I'm not so certain that I can use "I'm in grad school--we're all borderline alcoholics!" as my excuse to drink a glass (or three) of wine a night. (yes, alcoholism is a terrible disease but so is graduate school).
At any rate, for those of you wondering about the actual details of my defense, here is (in honor of my powerpoint presentation) a run-down in bullets:
~room filled to capacity (granted, I had a VERY small conference room, but still, there were some unexpected people in the audience)
~the snacks were well received by all (anyone else have faculty that don't like to eat the food? 'cause mine avoided all execpt for the bottled water, but once the public portion was over, they all filled their plates with cheese, cookies, and fruit and spent a good five minutes eating before continuing with their questions)
~talk took 45 minutes, with ~20 minutes of public questions (more on that in a future post)
~ my thesis was accepted as is, without any requests for revisions (I'd like to believe that this is due to my brilliant writing and not due to a lack of thorough reading on the part of my committee)
So all-in-all a very good defense! Now, I believe that next up to bat is Yajeev, so head on over to Land of Yajeev and send some well wishes!!
