A Dress and a Defense

Since a number of you wonderful readers have asked to know a bit more about my defense, I'll tell you a more about it after the snap of yesterday's outfit.¹ I wore this Boden crinkle linen dress to run errands, including taking that stupid Tahari dress back to Macy's and grocery shopping, and to make risotto.

1. Dress - Boden (via Ebay), Shoes - Diba (remixed), Hat - Vintage (won in Leproust Vintage's charity auction), Earrings - Gift from friend (remixed), Sunnies - Esprit (thrifted and remixed)

So onto the defense.  I'll preface these remarks by saying that technically defenses are open in my department, but that no one ever actually comes to them.  We don't give a presentation.  It's pretty much two hours of Q&A, which has its advantages and disadvantages.  While it's not that uncommon for people to fail their candidacy exams in my department, there has only been one person who failed their dissertation defense in the recent history of my program.  The knowledge that there was that one person who didn't make it through their defense put a small dose of healthy fear into me in the days leading up to mine.

To be frank, my actual defense was rather anticlimactic in a lot of ways.  I was sent out of the room at the start, so that my committee could talk about whether or not they planned to pass me and how to structure the defense (or so I assume), and, when I came back in, my committee confirmed that they wanted to spend the first hour of the defense talking about the dissertation itself and the second hour talking about transitioning into the book.  (This was an idea that had been bandied about via email before the defense and had given me some confidence going into that room.)  I received some praise, some criticism, a couple of tough questions, a question that I couldn't really answer, and some questions that I had no problem with.  Before we knew it, we had been talking for about an hour and forty minutes.  At that point my supervisor said that there were only twenty minutes left in the defense so we should talk a bit about ideas for transitioning the diss into a book manuscript.  We bounced some ideas around.  Then my chair sent me back out of the room.  I decided to use the chance to go to the washroom.  When I got out, they had opened the door, and as I walked back in, they greeted me as "Doctor" and there were hugs and handshakes all around.  

My advisor told me later in an email and then again at the small dinner party that he held for me a couple of days after the defense that the outside faculty rep (who was in Neuroscience) had said that I was very poised.  I didn't necessarily feel that way, but once I started talking I hadn't really felt nervous either.  I've had a fair amount of experience presenting my research and handling criticisms and questions.  In the past six years I've defended my MA thesis, my candidacy exams, presented at numerous conferences, had job interviews, and given a job talk.  It's no less true for being a truism that when you are defending your dissertation, you are the expert on that topic; you have read far more and thought far more about it than anyone else in that room will have.

Honestly, the thing that was most difficult for me during my defense was handling praise from my committee.  I had steeled myself for tough questions and maybe even a bit of hostility, so I found myself caught a bit off-guard when my co-advisor and one of my committee members began their comments and questions by praising my project and the work that I had done.  It was particularly meaningful -- albeit disconcerting -- to me coming from one of my committee members, who is a woman and whom I very much admire as a mentor.   I didn't cry during the defense, but I did later when I told M. and my best friend, Herr Doktor, about their praise.

That's pretty much it.  The two hours flew by.  I'm glad that it's over with, of course.  But in the end, the project isn't finished.  I have a few changes to make before I deposit the dissertation.  Even that is just a draft, though.  In the next year or so, I'll be working to turn it into a book.  I am, however, going to take a couple of months away from the project after the deposit to get some other things cleared off my desk and to come back to it with a fresh eye.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to leave them in the comments or to email me.