No shit, there I was...

[rivka]

Sometime on the morning of my dissertation defense I had a startling realization: nervous and excited have the same physiological component. If you feel jumpy and wired and your muscles are tense and your heart is pounding, you get to decide whether to label that "excited" or "nervous." I firmly told myself I was excited, and it almost completely worked.

I got seven full hours of sleep Tuesday night, and woke up thinking about an additional advantage to using analog data collection methods. I felt as though my brain was lit up like a Christmas tree, all kinds of associational pathways humming along at top speed. I had to jump out of the shower and write down a couple of notes. Definitely excited.

Around 9:30, curiousangel dropped me off at the Psychology Department. I double-checked my room reservation and looked at the room to figure out how I wanted the layout and make sure the overhead projector worked. Then I went along to John's office. He wasn't there, but he'd left an article on the desk for me. It went on for many long pages criticizing the practice of dichotomizing continuous variables (which is something I did) and exploding the rationales researchers offer for doing so. As I sat there constructing new rationalizations like mad, I came upon an explicit exemption for data sets of my type on the last page. Whew.

John came in and explained to me at length that curiousangel and I took the wrong route from Chicago to Iowa City - every girl's #1 concern on the morning of her defense. We agreed that the article criticizing dichotomization didn't really apply to me. He told me, "I probably shouldn't tell you this, but Don Van Dyke [my outside reader, from the Pediatrics department] didn't want to come to the defense. He thinks it's an excellent document, an excellent study, and he doesn't have any questions." And also, "I ran into Jodie, and she thought it was a very good document." With his own approval, that made three happy committee members that I knew about in advance, so I felt great.

I hadn't expected to feel like eating, but I was hungry. Michael and I had an early lunch at my former habitual deli and talked about Howard Dean. Then we went back to the hotel, I got dressed - and I should've listened to mactavish, because I got a run in my formerly runless stockings and we had to dash out and buy more - and we returned to the department. Michael dropped me off out front and went to park the car and buy me a bottle of water.

I wanted to get to the room first so that I could sort of make it my own. I spread out my things at one end of the conference table, including the "look, a monkey!" pen minnaleigh gave me, in case I got asked a question I didn't know and had to distract the committee. As my committee entered, I shook each of their hands and thanked them for coming. Everyone beamed at me. Once they were all assembled, they sent me out into the hall so they could make a plan for the defense. Michael was out there, and he held my hand until I was invited back in. Then he waved goodbye, and I was on my own.

"You know the presentation you prepared?" John asked. "Skip right to your results." I put up the overhead showing the graph of my main effect, which is really quite impressive-looking, and described it. One of my committee members asked a question, and we were immediately off to the races. I never got a chance to present anything in a linear fashion - we all just had an extended conversation about my study and what it means. I wish I remembered more about what exactly was said! But I was in some kind of clear, high-energy, rapid-speed intellectual flow, and the defense just sort of unfolded by itself.

John said almost nothing. There was one question I was a bit uncertain about - Peter Nathan wanted to know what kind of research had been done to support my statement that most physical abuse arises from failed disciplinary attempts. I watched John during the question and my answer, and he helped me out with tiny signals. "I assume there isn't any direct observation research..." Peter said, and John shook his head, barely perceptibly. "Actually, there have been observation studies, out at the Oregon Social Learning Center," I said, and John nodded, barely perceptibly, and I had my feet under me again and went on smoothly from there. Late in the defense, John made some supportive comments, but mostly it was entirely my show.

None of the comments were critical. None. Some of them were of the form, "I'm not sure that you can interpret X as meaning Y...", but that didn't feel critical to me - it just felt like deep mutual engagement with the topic. Don Van Dyke kept illustrating my points with his clinical experience working with families of disabled children. I felt as though that added depth and realism to the academic aspects of the debate, in a really neat way. Finally we got down to the level of typos ("On page 64, you say Table 10 and I think you mean Table 12... when you renumber tables, that really gets you in trouble." "On page 57, you don't mean that you had a t of 55?" "No, that's the degrees of freedom." "Oh, never mind."), and then I asked, "Any other questions?" They all smiled at me. Then they sent me out into the hall.

I called Michael, who was off wandering the streets. "Come on back!" "How'd it go?" "I think it went great." The clinic secretary came by and commiserated with me about having to wait in the hall. Then the door opened. It wasn't my advisor - it was the person who had been sitting closest to the door. "Come on back in." I re-entered the room. They were all deep in conversation, and no one said anything to me immediately. Then I made eye contact with Don Fowles and he gave me a big grin and a thumbs-up. Relief!

I only had a few minor corrections to make - mostly clarifications of individual sentences. They all signed my Certificate of Approval at once. Many compliments and handshakes, and a couple of hugs. Many friendly comments about my future career. "Are you likely to be able to get a faculty position where you are now?" "If you want to go to University of Maryland, Baltimore County, I'm very good friends with the department chair. I could give him a call." "Yeah, and the Dean there is an old chum of mine." "There's nothing wrong with continuing in a clinical position if you like it - I did that for fifteen years." "Obviously, you could go as far as you want." Michael came in and hugged me, and people shook his hand, and it was over. I made calls. I couldn't stop giggling and bouncing around and exclaiming about my degree. My advisor took us out for an amazing dinner to celebrate.

I made my final deposit today. That means that all the corrections were made and the Graduate College has accepted the final document, with no further need for revisions. I returned my keys to the department. I'm done here. Dr. Rivka Wald. Rebecca Wald, Ph.D.

Damn.

Comments

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Much more exciting than my defense!

And you rock utterly, Dr. Rivka. :-)

-J

[rivka.livejournal.com]

What, your defense was boring?

*beam beam beam*

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

It really was kind of boring. Fun in parts, but mostly boring. They bickered about my title, and stuff. And it was short. Yours sounded much more interesting on an intellectual level. :-)

-J