The PhD Chronicles: Dissertation Defended

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Well, it's done. I successfully defended my dissertation; I'm now just have edits to incorporate and getting it through the institutional process.  Damn--I finally did it!  After writing some 60+ posts on this subject (Started here and continues with this tag), I'm within a handful of posts to wrap up the (chronologically) longest series I've done on this blog.  

So how was the defense?  It was everything I needed it to be and more.  

I spent the few weeks before trying to work to construct the presentation so that it would make sense both to my audience and my committee.  I got a draft and recorded it for my chair.  He provided rich feedback that told me I was on the right track and that I needed to refine a few parts to keep the focus forward going.  I practiced a few more times and felt largely ready for the presentation part.  After all, presenting complex ideas to folks that were likely to challenge me was something I've been working through over the last few years with all my work around generative AI.  

While I was ready for that part of it, the thing I wasn't ready for was the emotional experience of presenting to a room composed largely of friends and family.  I am used to presenting in Zoom and even gotten used to presenting with some people in the audience that I know.  But I wasn't quite ready to see the Zoom room open and over 50 people--most of whom were family and friends--flood in.  That took me back.  Not because I didn't expect people to show up but because I didn't realize there would be that many.  

Up until the Zoom opened, I was a little nervous but largely grounded and comfortable. I woke up earlier than usual (3am'ish) and once I realized I wasn't going to get back to bed, I started my morning. I wasn't tired so I didn't mind this so much. I even got in a 40 minute run on the treadmill just to work out nerves and clear the jitters.  I knew the order of things; I was prepared as I was going to be.  I had my coffee and water.  But then I see all those people and well, I felt all the feels.  

Dr. Dee did introductions and then handed it to me and as I started to talk and see the folks, that's when I began to lose it.  I felt the emotions swell up; I could hear the cracks in my voice; the water welling in my eyes.  I stumbled my way through the introductory slide and we were off.  

Still, at the start of every slide, I felt that welling up--maybe because it was a moment I was moving my attention from my script to the screen and catching another name in the attendees or I was seeing the number of attendees rise.  But for the first 5-8 minutes of the dissertation, I was delivering it while also trying to deeply breath and ground myself as I felt the waves of emotion hitting me.  

It wasn't stress or anxiety or anything bad that kept welling up.  It was love. 50 people in my life--some of whom I had only briefly interacted over decades showed up at 7am to see this thing I've been working through for over a decade.  So, I was trying to balance feeling that love and the warmth it produced in me with the challenge of trying to actually get through the presentation.

Eventually, I found my stride and finished the presentation.  Once on the other side of it, I felt relieved and then, of course, had to be ready for the actual hard part, the questioning.  Now, to be clear, I have an amazing committee.  They've been thoughtful, supportive, and insightful about different challenges and considerations for my study. I have not felt anything but absolute appreciation for them because they've played this role and played it for probably longer than they might have to for a typical doctoral student.  Still, I was nervous about their questioning me in front of everyone in that room.  

I didn't have real reasons to believe that they wouldn't be as thoughtful as in previous experiences, but grounded evidence and nerves do not necessarily overlap in a Venn diagram.  So, the questioning began.  

My chair, an effective and skillful master of ceremonies if there ever was one, recapped my presentation with accolades and explained that we would move into questioning from the different committee members with a particular order and time allotment.  He would round out the group at the end.  

The questions were all insightful engagements with my written dissertation, demonstrated deep thinking about what I wrote.  The questions had nothing really to do with the methodology itself or the findings, but more about how I structured them in literature review, discussion, and the importance of carrying threads that I had started earlier into the final chapter.  It all made sense--they caught the things I had dropped and in a few particular instances, helped me speak more clearly about things I needed to articulate better in the writing.  

I had one area that I stumbled--an area that I told my partner I felt most unsteady the night before.  I really like phenomenography as I've gotten to work through it and do this study. Yet, I can struggle a lot with theory and method. I often feel I still have training wheels when trying to talk about things like epistemology and ontology. So when I got questions that dug into my understanding about the the methodology--I definitely struggled.  I think what was interested about this moment was that I was fine with struggling and navigating a weakness in front of everyone; but many folks weren't.  In the conversation later and follow up messages, a good amount of folks felt like what the committee was doing was too much; but it didn't feel that way to me. It felt like an appropriate challenge about understanding what I was talking about by an expert in the field. And the stumbling--well, I knew it was a weak point and the clarity of the conversation during the dissertation helped me understand some of how the lack of clarity was showing up in the dissertation--the exact goal of a dissertation defense.

Still, overall the questioning felt empowering. I got asked questions and I felt entirely skilled at answering them.  I could connect what was being asked with what I wrote and what I saw among the participants. They often say that being prepared for a defense is knowing that you are actually the expert in the room--and much of the time, I felt that way about the work I had done. 

After the questioning, the committee went into a breakout room to converse and decide while I stayed in the room with folks who were still there (by this point it was 8:40am'ish--people had places to be!).  This was a sweet moment where I got to just talk with and hear from people about what they had just witnessed.  Many accolades were shared and some folks shared how they met me and why they showed up.  If I wasn't already feeling all the feels, I was doubly-feeling it now.  

Again, to see the different people from different walks of life engaging with me and one another was precious and appreciated.  As my partner said in another one of her astute observations, in many ways, it was like the best part of a funeral--many people showed up and gave accolades but you didn't have to be in the casket.  

The committee finally came back and announced that I had passed.  There were (and always will be) edits but that that those would come along later in the day to review and integrate to the dissertation, but for all intents and purposes, I had successfully defended and would be graduating at the end of the (next term--too late for fall).  

It's been a long trip...but because I started this out doing it for me, I am glad that I have completed and can wrap this up.  I'll have a few more post in this series cause we're not quite done yet and I think there's likely to be some posts about the process from here to walking across the stage that would also be helpful to folks.  Still, I also want to thank readers--some of y'all have been reading about this since my first post years ago and have regularly commented here about things.  Others have signed up to the blog just to follow this series and others are probably reading this in the future.  Thanks for joining me--it's been a lot and meant a lot!

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