The Defense

Now that I'm on the road I have some time to catch up on my blogging. There's a lot to tell! First the defense itself. The night before I slept fine, and I would suggest reading articles about dynamical models if anyone has trouble falling asleep on the eve of their defense. In the morning I wasn't too nervous, I was just very focused on the task at hand. The night before I had run through my talk and I wasn't really happy with it - it just felt a little off. So I wanted to work on my transitions and things for that. Also, I had a list of a few things that I wanted to study or go over before my closed door session. So I went through all of that and I told everyone not to talk to me. It of course turns out that they didn't ask me about any of that stuff. Before the talk my advisor introduced me and said some very nice things about me. I know I shouldn't be surprised, but I really was and it was very nice. The talk itself was good. I think that it is a strength of our department that we get so much practice giving talks, and in my seminar group in particular we are used to getting a lot of questions from the faculty. Also, as a teacher I am used to talking in front of a group like that. So I actually wasn't really nervous at all. One of my friends later told me that it seemed like another seminar talk, which I guess was the attitude that I took with it. For example, at a few points my advisor stopped me and said something like, "Did you see their new paper on this? The result changed." Other people thought this was something he should have pointed out to me *before* the defense, but that's the way it goes and I just rolled with it. I thought that the talk went great - I timed it perfectly and I got a bunch of questions and I think I was able to answer all of them. I even had a few extra slides prepared to answer a question and someone actually asked the question - gotta love that! Some of my friends from student governance stuff came to the talk, which was really cool, and my mom was there too. Thanks to all who came - it was a good crowd!

I tried very hard to not get nervous before the closed door because I knew that would make me forget how to think. It was actually much better than I expected, and better than the second year defense (qualifying exam), which is what everyone told me would be the case. Most of it was talking about my projects and why I chose some of the things I did, how I would improve it, etc. They asked a few more sciencey questions that I couldn't answer, but I think a lot of it was not understanding what they were asking. One of my committee members kept saying, "I know you know the answer to this." And I wanted to say, "if you know I know then why are you torturing me by making me guess!" One of these resulted in him telling me that the answer he was looking for was "objects with larger velocities go farther than objects with smaller velocities." No wonder all I could come up with was, "because they just do." Then we spent a good amount of time talking about my future plans and which areas I should focus on for my next papers, how I should go about getting tenure, etc. One of my committee members, when it was his turn, said, "I wrote a few things down but I think you did a good job so I don't really want to go into it, so I think I'll pass." Sounds good to me! He also said that he wanted to point out that he thought the talk was really good, and then the other people chimed in and said they meant to say that too and that they could see why I was such a good teacher. Aww, how nice! So all in all it was much less scary than I anticipated, though I do wish I could have answered everything like they wanted.

They also all were very nice about me incorporating their comments, since they knew that I only had a few days before it needed to be turned in. Though I think that is reasonable given that only one person actually gave me comments before the defense (and it wasn't my advisor). They were more concerned with making sure that the resulting papers are strong.

The only hitch was that one of my committee members was in Brazil and wasn't able to get either a phone or internet connection through. Eventually he got through toward the end of my closed door session and emailed a few questions that I answered for the rest of the committee.

Thanks to all the people who sent me good wishes in advance - I was too busy/focused to respond to them, but I did read them all and appreciated them!