Defended

I had my defense last Friday. I was extremely nervous and prepared lots of notes, but I ended up barely looking at them at all. The tone of the meeting was friendly: in retrospect, I'm glad I packed my committee with people who like me, and I'm glad I ended up with the time slot I did—3:00 p.m. on the Friday before Thanksgiving. Everyone seemed to be in a festive, and somewhat tired, mood—perfect for my purposes.

Now I just have to enter some minor revisions and formatting changes and submit it to the Graduate College. I can't believe I'm this close to not being a student anymore—a very welcome closure of a too-long chapter in my life.

The peeled-off stars above represent all the days I spent at least some time working on the dissertation since August 2008: 347 in all.

Since I'm not in search of an academic job, there's no immediate pressure to make the introduction into a book proposal or send out articles. So I plan to take a break from the library and try to spend my free time in ways less angst-filled and more enjoyable.

I think there's going to be some emotional fallout at some point—"What was it all for, why did I torture myself for so long, etc."—but for now it's worth it to have finished just to have proved to myself that I could to it, that I could get a PhD.