defending

today i wore a blue button down shirt and black pants, black heels. full makeup. thought that if i looked professional, i might feel more authoritative.

i write my dissertation spiel (the presentation i'm supposed to give to my audience before the question period) in the two hours before the defense is scheduled to occur. but i get to campus with plenty of time to print and make copies of my signature sheets and walk over to the building.

i am the first one there. the conference room has one long table with several chairs as well as seats and a sofa along the walls of the room. i position myself at the head of the table.

people begin to file in slowly. my closest friends take their seats at the opposite end of the table, expecting that my profs will be sitting on either side of me. my committee member, dr. l arrives, then dr. m, then dr. f. more friends and colleagues. one of my committee members has emailed to tell me that she will be unable to attend, so we are only waiting on one other professor.

fifteen minutes pass. dr. l calls the missing prof on his cell phone. dr. m goes downstairs to check to see if he is in the wrong room. my friend, veronica, runs (in her very cute shoes) to the history department to see if she can track him down. no luck and no luck. but sometime during this period, a deliveryman appears with a vase of long-stemmed pink roses for me. from las girlfriends sitting at the end of the table.

dr. l begins making phone calls to the tower. we're trying to have a dissertation defense, but are one professor short of a quorum. what can we do? he disappears downstairs and reappears with the anthropology graduatue advisor, a professor i know by name and sight but have never spoken with.

though he doesn't know me and doesn't know anything about my project, because he is the anthropology graduate advisor, he can sit in for a missing professor during a dissertation defense.

the committee evicts everyone from the room to plan to their line of questioning. i am in the hallway thinking, are you kidding? this cannot possibly count. only three people in there have read my dissertation. someone someday is going to call me on this. my ph.d. won't really count because i didn't have a real defense!

one of my friends overhears one of my professors tell the graduate advisor that this is just a "formality" because my dissertation is pretty solid.

i am relieved, but still upset.

we are invited back into the room. i give my spiel and they start to ask me questions. the questions aren't bad. some of them are challenging, but it does seem to be more of a conversation than an oral exam. after the first hour, the graduate adviser has to leave, and, minutes later, my missing committee member appears telling me that he has a good excuse. he has come armed with his questions. more questions. more questions. i'm tired. it seems that everyone is tired. shifting in their seats and muffling sighs and yawns.

the question period ends and they kick everyone out of the room. i am invited back in after some minutes.

"congratulations," my advisor tells me. you passed. they have some minor revisions. four more pages of a conclusion.

everyone is signing forms.

congratulations, dr. n (that's me!).

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