I have until 15 November to complete my revisions, submit them to my director, then the graduate student office, for graduation.
The nature of the revisions are to sharpen and define earlier, and in more detail, some of the terms I use. In particular, how I define the political devil. In some cases, to expand the scope of what I'm talking about, the political aftermath of texts. One note was that in the dissertation, I draw clear lines between the common understanding of the dissertation and the "counter narrative" of the political devil. It was pointed out that there's more slippage here than the writing currently shows, and counter is not the best word, complicates, or non conformist, something like that might be better. I need to show it's not an either or, but a blending. The chapter that had the biggest notes were the Milton chapter, sharpening how Satan is an English devil, how it's nationalist, and to signpost more clearly the equivocation and rhetoric. One note was that a previous edit of the chapter had clearer language. One note was to not focus so much on "Devil" as "devil signifiers in the texts." The introduction does spend a lot of time describing the traditional devil, and then the diss looks at the non-traditional devil, which I think is important-- if I'm going to talk about how the political devil is different from the traditional, I think I need to spend time showing what the traditional is, but I need to be clearer that is how I'm framing it.
They'll be sending me their drafts with notes for reference.
The defense itself did not really go like I thought.
To prep, I reread the dissertation, corrected typos, horrified there still WERE typos, and marking bits I thought would come up. None of them did.
For the most part, I did not need my copy at all. No one said, on page X can you talk more about this. But certainly having read through the whole thing made me feel more confident.
To prep, I created several documents. The first one I created was a chart that I created based on concerns, pet peeves, notes from committee members, that I pulled from previous drafts and emails. I then went through the diss and formulated answers, page numbers where I put the answer, explanations, etc. I created a short Google Slide presentation to go with my written presentation. Originally I wrote my presentation as an outline, but decided the Sunday before defense I really wanted to write it out so if I was nervous, and needed it, I had it written word for word to read off of. It turns out this was a good choice, my best friend who came, said that I was clearly nervous at first, but as I read, it was clear I became more confident. Last weekend, my director recommended I make a handout for my committee, focusing on the major arguments of the texts, so I did. Earlier this week, I thought that methodology might be something I was asked about, so I made a cheat sheet of the major theory in the diss. At the end of my presentation I also had a list of questions that I pulled from reading different articles and advice blogs about common defense questions and my answer. Things like what the biggest problems were, how I came up with the research question, what came next. I emailed the presentation, and handout out to everyone.
The weekend before, I printed all this stuff out, I tested my presentation clicker, I packed my Post-Its, highlighter, pens, and flags.
I also mailed my thank you gift to one long term committee member, a thank you card to another, and packed/wrapped the two gifts for my committee members I'd see. And then I set them aside until Friday.
The night before, I pulled out my laptop, made sure Skype was up to date (I was Skyping in two committee members). I had also never Skyped two people in, so I looked up on the Internet how to do it, then enlisted two Twitter friends to let me try it out. They both warned about the wonkiness of Skype and recommended using Google Hangouts. So I set up the video call event, sent an email to all to have this as a backup. I also, on their advice, included my phone number. This was the only glitch in the defense- one committee member was in Hangouts, the other texted that there were too many plugins to load, so we went to have them in Skype. But turns out you can't run both programs at the same time. So Hangouts professor switched over to Skype. It was like a five minute delay in starting. So not major.
After I picked up my best friend at the airport Thursday we had dinner, caught up, and to keep me from chasing my own tail, we made devil cupcakes.
We took some to defense the next day and handed them out to office staff later.
The defense focused totally on asking me why I made the arguments I did, asking me to justify arguments and choices. No one made a reference to the handout. There were no questions about the methodology. And there wasn't a single question that was anything close to my question list.
I ended up with three pages of notes, and my best friend videoed the defense, which looking at snippets I'm happy about, because as I go to work on revisions, I can listen to it, to make sure I'm on the right track.
My revisions only have to be approved by my director, so this week I plan on drafting an email about the steps to approaching these revisions-- for this comment, my approach was going to be X, for that one, Y. Just to make sure I am on the right track.
I feel fine about the revisions asked of me. And I don't think I'll have any problems completing them by the 15 November deadline. I will say, I've not worked on them at all this weekend. In fact, I only looked at my notes when I sat down to write this post. My best friend flew in from LA Thursday night, I took all day Friday off from my high school teaching job, and we've had a pretty chill weekend. Of course, on a personal note, this week was rough for reasons totally unrelated to the dissertation defense.
Nehi's had what looked like a laceration on her paw pad of the toe that was amputated years ago because she had a tumor. We've been in and out of the vet's office the last month about this-- it's healing, it's not healing, give her twice daily epsom salt baths to draw out the whatever, no walkies, some walks, on and on. Last Saturday was the last vet visit, and vet (not our vet) said it looked fine. But she took a picture of it to show our vet. Who promptly looked at it Monday, decided he didn't want to take chances after a month, and so scheduled a biopsy.
For Friday morning.
So I got up Friday, dropped Nehi off at 745 in the morning. I went back home, and tried to chill before the defense.
I showed my best friend some of the articles/chapters I'd written, and we watched The Nightmare of Elm Street reboot was 2010.
A couple hours later, just as I'm getting ready to get ready for the defense, the vet calls and says that now that Nehi is sedated and he can look at the paw pad without her biting him, it looks much worse, and given the tumor history, he wants to be aggressive and take the whole rest of the toe, not just the biopsy. So I stood in the shower sobbing that my baby was going to be taken from me, and wondering how the hell I was going to get it together to do my defense.
Just before we got ready to walk out the door, they called to say that Nehi came through surgery and was okay, I could pick her up after the defense. It'll be a week of so before we get the results back, but I was able at least to pull it together for my defense.
None of my professors I've had during my time here came to my defense. One graduate student came. So it was just me, my best friend, my director, one in person committee member, and the two who Skyped in. It was a small room, and honestly, this has all been such an ordeal, if it didn't go well, I didn't want witnesses, so that was fine by me. Kind of. I waffled between feeling that, and feeling like no one was celebrating me, which didn't just apply to school, but my family as well, but that's just the reality. It was the same room I defended my prospectus in, so I was familiar with the layout, so I wasn't nervous about any of that.
The defense itself is a bit of a blur. So I'm glad I have my notes and the video for reference. I can say I don't feel like there were any questions I didn't think I could answer, or that I didn't answer, or had a hard time with. Although in several instances I did get the feeling committee members were not satisfied with my answers, but just decided to stop pressing. That may just be my perception.
I think part of why defenses are hard is we don't have a sphere of reference. The format of mine, which my director had explained last weekend, was my presentation, one round of 15 minute questions, then if people wanted, another round of 5 minutes of follow up. My presentation was about 15 minutes. We did an hour of first round of questions, then the follow up round of roughly 20 minutes. Then my best friend, the one graduate student who came, and me, were asked to leave the room, and we stepped outside.
We made small talk, about what I couldn't tell you.
Then my director popped her head out and told us that we could come back in, I sat down, and she told me they had decided to pass me with revisions. She started to go over them, and one of my committee members interrupted her and said, "doctor" which I thought was sweet. My director finished going over the list of revision notes, I took notes. I honestly don't remember what else happened. She asked me if I wanted to add anything, so I thanked everyone, we logged off Skype, those of us there chatted for a while later, then my friend and I left. I called my godmother to tell her the good news sitting in my truck in the parking garage. She squealed, and we promised to Skype later this week to catch up in detail. The first place we stopped was to see my tattoo artist, to tell him the good news. I gave the guys the rest of the cupcakes, and told him I'd see him next Saturday (we've continuing the armbands, Old English script from Genesis B for one arm, Christ and Satan for the other, both the text that describes Satan's fall).
We had dinner, watched X-Files, and I felt bad because Nehi was still all wonky from the anesthesia.
I was asleep by 8p.
Then it was up early yesterday because I had Saturday school to teach.
Daily life goes on.
In many ways, nothing seems different and everything does. I was telling my best friend that much of grad school is like this- you pass one milestone, and there's a beat to celebrate, but then there's something else to do, to keep moving forward. So, I am happy the defense is done, but there are still revisions to do, and then there will be graduation. It doesn't quite seem real that this is the last set of hurdles, that once I complete the revisions, and graduate, this is all done. I am touched my director offered to sit through the three hour university ceremony to hood me. I had not originally planned on going, but since she offered, I am now. Because I've earned this. No one will come, it will just be us, but I deserve to have some pomp and circumstance, and to wear my funny little hat.
It was fun changing my email signature to Dr.
I was overwhelmed and touched at the waves of support all weekend from my Twitter friends. The celebratory gifs in my feed has made me giggle and laugh.
I was touched an older professor, the one who first encouraged me to pursue my doctorate, announced me as doctor to all of Facebook.
My students who came to Saturday school yesterday asked if I passed the defense, and told me congratulations, which was cool.
I feel good about just taking this weekend with my friend. We just hung out yesterday at the house after Saturday school. His mom called me, and told me how proud she was of me. And I cried. Because my mom would have loved this. Oh man, she would have been over the moon. She would have BRAGGED. She would have called me the morning of to buoy me up, she would have sent me a care package to get me through. She would have been insufferable. And I would have loved it. But she's not here. So to have my best friend's mom tell me I was one of her kids, and she couldn't be prouder really meant a lot.
Another friend posted on Facebook how proud she was of me, and she knew my mom would be too.
I've thought of Mom a lot these last few weeks. I always miss her, but it was particularly sharp these weeks.
My best friend treated me to dinner last night, we're going to go see Blade Runner 2049 today, and he flies home tonight. The revisions, job applications, and my day job will all be there tomorrow, life goes back to normal. I mean, I'm totally going to make people call me doctor, and I totally redid the sign for outside my classroom:
I've been thinking a lot about that. I have always moved and chased jobs, my actions dictated by what I needed to do. I have never sat and thought about what I wanted my life to be, where I wanted to live, and had the freedom to make decisions based on that. So I'm excited.
But I do not know what comes next. Where I'll be in a year, or after. But for now, this all seems enough.
I worked incredibly hard to get here. I did it with little help. I did it with no personal support system except Nehi and my tattoo artist. I did it despite overwhelming, soul-crushing obstacles.
I am proud of myself, because I earned this.
To all who helped along the way...
