Defense

This morning I dreamed that I opened my closet and found the perfect outfit to wear for my defense this afternoon. There was a cotton blazer hanging next to a sundress, fitted but with enough give to accommodate my burgeoning belly. "They're so colorful!" I thought in my dream. They certainly were. They were turquoise, lime green, and yellow plaid -- slightly different plaids for the two pieces. I am cracking up at the memory -- I hope the idea of this ensemble amuses you even a quarter as much as it does me.

For my defense I wore a white T-shirt with a knee-length khaki jumper. No one could have accused me of being overly colorful. I got more and more jumpy as 2:30 got closer. My prospectus meeting last summer was tough, two hours of unrelenting questions and then many, many revisions requested in my document.

This meeting was also two hours long, with plenty of tough questions, but it was less stressful -- whether because I was expecting it to be long and hard, or because I have the data in hand confirming my hypothesis, I can't say. (Data! Confirming my hypothesis! I still get a little rush when I say that.) I collected information from mothers on a variable that is a Hot Topic in the mommy wars, and I think for as long as I am talking about these findings to women, I'm going to be dealing with ancillary issues arising from their own experiences. Oh, well. That's part of why I'm choosing a different focus for my dissertation.

Anyway: I passed! I was holding back on feeling gleeful until I looked through their marked-up copies of my document, because I was not going to rejoice if I had a hundred hours' worth of revising to do. But I took myself to dinner at my favorite place in town and looked through their comments, and it seems like the revisions should be very manageable. I passed! Hurray!