Woohoo, I successfully defended my PhD dissertation today! It has been a long 6 years coming, and really the whole day was pretty surial. Everyone kept asking me after it was over how I felt, and I honestly had to say that I didn't know...I was really just in a haze and kind of numb.
The public talk went really well, and I got a ton of complaments. I think the best ones were from my friends in other fields who said that they actually understood most of my talk! That means I succeeded! The closed session with my committee went pretty well too....I gut some really good feedback and suggestions for small things to do to strengthen my final conclusions before I publish this part of the work. I think the best part of the day though was this morning when I met with my advisor, and he was getting really excited about the last things that I had finished up, and said that next week we need to talk about getting this work together to submit to Science! For those of you in the science fields you get what a huge deal that is :D For the rest of you, Science is one of the two top journals to get your work published in because it reaches such a broad audience. They only accept work that is really novell and new, and that has broad interest across many disciplines of science. So this is really exciting... hopefully it will get accepted.
Had a nice reception at the department in the afternoon when I finished, and then tonight my advisor had a big party at his place for me and a couple of other people in my group who are also finishing up. My friend Hannah defended 2 weeks ago, and my roommate Amie, and office mate Pijush will be defending in the fall, but are walking through graduation this weekend.
Now I get to relax and entertain the partents, my grandma, and my brother for the rest of the weekend. Looking forward to getting some sleep, and riding my bike a lot more!
E.
