The End Part I

I've decided to finish this year-long blog with a multi-part conclusion. Today's will cover what happens just before and after the defense. Next, there will be the submission to the university process (I still have to do that). Lastly, will be 'What's Next' (which I'm still working on).

Before the defense: Once I had the paperwork all submitted to the university, and a 'defense draft' to the committee, I spent the next six weeks reviewing and revising the entire 300-page dissertation. If anyone's wondering, yes, that's long for a dissertation in the MU English department. Looking up some other recent ones for formatting, I noticed that they were under 200 pages. Oh well.

As I reviewed and edited the actual text, I added a lot of commentary with notes, extra information, extended references and quotations, and possible defense questions in the margins. I think adding and considering possible questions was really helpful. To those who have yet to defend, pay attention to questions and comments on previous drafts as these can (and will) come up in your defense.

The actual defense was not as stressful as I would have guessed. As one of the readers pointed out to the audience (and to me in an email a few days beforehand), these things are designed to make the 'defendant' look good and show what they have learned. I think what really nailed it for me was when I answered a committee member with (this is a paraphrase) "I think I was not quite right in the original proposal. As the project progressed, I realized that a better way to frame the entire project was not as a 'definition' but as a 'framework for discussion'. " Those present will remember that this reader did not have too many questions after that. My point here is that admitting that something in the original proposal may have changed is a good thing.

Lesson: You are not defending your DQE proposal again. You are defending something entirely new.

Immediately after the defense: I spent the rest of the week checking a few final details and one reader's notes (mostly grammar related). On Monday, I will review the formatting and attempt to submit the final document to the university. We shall see how that goes.

It probably goes without saying that some immediate celebration would be in order. I took the rest of the day after the defense off. I went to yoga, and then to dinner. Group celebrating will come later this coming week (coinciding with my birthday, which times out well). Today, in honor of planning to submit the final dissertation,  I finally signed up for Goodreads. I also started reading a novel that I purchased some time ago. The stack of 'things to read once I'm done' stands at around 10 novels, and a few manga volumes. I have tried to keep the pile of novels roughly in order of when purchased. On the top is Nick Harkman's "Angelmaker". I'm about 25 pages in, and I'm really enjoying it. Stay tuned to Goodreads for an eventual review :)

That's it for now. Stay tuned for some commentary on the submission process, the state of my Netflix cue, and reviews of the local Milwaukee coffee shops. Since I did the majority of my writing and reading in them, and I did the same for their UK counterparts, I figure this is a necessary thing to include in a chronicle of the final dissertation year.

PS- Who wants to guess how many times I misspelled 'defence' and had to go back and fix it in this post?