Dissertation

Jim here--

Thanks for all your great comments! It's been so fun to see all the encouraging notes and congratulations.

Getting across the finish line yesterday for the PhD was a huge milestone for us. Thursday, October 2 was the day I finally turned in the final copy of my dissertation signed by my three examiners or readers. Yahoo!!

I thought I'd fill you in on what happened the last few weeks from my perspective.

I spent the two weeks before August 24 (D-Day, Defense Day) cramming for the big day. If this live defense of my dissertation didn't go well, it could have made all the work, transition, and sacrifice of the last year and a half worthless: leaving our friends at First Free, selling our house, moving to England, late nights in the library, etc. So I was feeling a little bit of pressure!

On D-Day, you go into a room with three professors who are sitting across the table from you. One of them is your supervisor--he's friendly and on your side. The other two are there to GRILL you--that's their job for the sake of maintaining academic quality. If you can't answer technical questions and defend yourself adequately, then presumably you are not prepared and don't know your material well enough. It's a good thing, but grueling. Oh, and there are half a dozen doctoral students in the room learning from your experience.

After a few softball questions to get the ball rolling, the second reader takes over. I had absolutely no idea what he would ask and was totally surprised by his lines of questioning. We went back and forth for over an hour. Then the third reader starts to ask his questions, again from a totally new angle.

Actually, the questions they asked were very thought-provoking. I have been thinking about their critiques and questions the last few days and feel like I understand my topic better because of the defense. So that too is part of the educational process.

Well, after the intense questioning, they ask you to leave and you sit outside for 15 minutes while your fate is in the balance. I was pretending to read a brochure, but I don't think anyone walking by was fooled for a second.

When they asked me back in the room, the third reader excused himself and walked out, which I took as a bad sign. But actually, he was going to get a bottle of sparkling grape juice to celebrate (for our British friends, Trinity is dry for the most part).

They did ask me to write another section and modify some things before they would sign off on the dissertation. So I spent the next week doing these revisions, then submitted them to my supervisor for his approval.

I can't tell you how good it felt to see the third signature go on the dissertation! I turned the two signed copies over to the librarian for binding, and walked away a free man after almost ten years of study!!

Several people have asked me what my dissertation is about. So I snapped pictures of some of the first few pages so you could get the gist of it if your interested.

The abstract will give you an overview of the whole thing. The total dissertation was 351 pages.

Enjoy...