So, this is Jason chiming in here for the first time in a while. I suddenly have far more free time than what had become the norm over the past 6 months! (This turned out to be a long story. Apologies. Hopefully the 5 years in the making of this post afford me a few extra paragraphs of your attention. )
The reason for all that extra free time is that I completed my dissertation, submitted it to my PhD committee, and then made it through the dissertation defense! I guess technically now I am officially Dr. Jason Schmucker, PhD. Yikes, that looks odd. I don't think it's all sunk in quite yet. Needless to say, I feel like a great weight lifted from my shoulders. We moved down here to Texas almost five years ago so I could chase this PhD. To finally have completed it is really just incredible.
It certainly hasn't been easy. The last months have been totally consumed with research and writing. The experiments that provided the data for my dissertation were done in January. I then spent the next 3 months analyzing that data, gathering results, and writing them up. It was a loooong process with lots of trouble along the way and many many late nights. I can't even remember how many times I was in my office on campus until 3, 4, even 5am. The streets of College Station are pretty empty at those hours of the morning for my drive home! I even worked all night without sleeping once while my parents were here for their visit to meet Caitlin.
I finished up my dissertation and submitted it to my committee members on April 23rd. That was a bit of a liberating experience, to know that part of the process was complete and out of my hands. Then I knew I had 10 days until my defense, on May 3. In that time, I prepared my presentation slides and gathered my thoughts about what I wanted to say. A good presentation takes a lot of work!
When the day finally came, I felt pretty good. Mel made some of her famous chocolate chip cookies; we also had brownies and fruit for at my defense. It's always good to butter up the committee a little bit with some tasty snacks! My presentation lasted about an hour. I felt very comfortable during it all - all the practicing paid off. After I finished presenting, the floor was opened up for questions from the ~10 students in attendance. After about 5 minutes of good questions from them, they were asked to leave so the committee could ask the tough questions. This is the real "defense" part of the whole process. However, I was pleased to realize that my committee members weren't asking any tough questions about my approach or decisions in the research - their questions reflected a genuine interest in what I had done! So after about 35 minutes of discussion with them, they asked me to leave the room so they could decide whether I passed. Not long after, Ed (my advisor and chair of my committee) called me back into the room and they all congratulated me. I had passed!
Around this time, Mel and Caitlin showed up to see how things had gone. It was great to see them both so soon after the big moment. Ed soon told me that he was very impressed with how everything went. He said the other committee members had similar feelings. One said he thought the I had done
seminal work, while the other wished more students had attended to see a high-quality dissertation defense. I was astonished to hear such compliments! All in all, the defense went as well as I ever could have expected.
That wrapped up the festivities for the day. Mel, Caitlin and I walked off into the sunset, happily ever after. Well, not really, but it sure felt great!
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| Me and Caitlin just after my defense |
TL; DR. Everything went fantastically; I'm now Dr. Jason.
