Tomorrow is my prospectus defense. This event marks the final preparations for Geraldine and the start of grueling dissertation compositions. Indiana and I will face three other professors who will question my methods, my data and entire proposed form of Geraldine at 9:00am and I will have to be awake and sound polished. Luckily the last 5 months have left me feeling very confident about this defense. So far every question that Indiana has brought up has been easy to answer. To make an analogy of my feelings regarding my preparation, if I were a gladiator, tomorrow's fight would be Indi and I against three very large stuffed animals (with big stuffed teeth and horns). In fact, I'm surprised at how easy it has been to answer questions.
For the first time, I feel like a true expert in my field and I'm starting to realize what it means to have a PhD. It doesn't mean that I know all of the answers but I do know more than anyone else in my department about my particular research topic and because of that, I'm the best suited person to answer my questions. Indi's role is simply to sit next to me, look impressed with my work, and tell everyone else how awesome I am. I've never been to a sitar concert, but I'm told that sitar concerts have a similar figure. This person sits at the front of the stage near the main sitar player and informs the audience how amazing the sitar player is. This only happens for the first half of the sitar concert. During the second half, the "look-at-what-a-superstar-our-main-player is-guy" plays the sitar as well.
I just met with Indi and I'm smiling and singing to myself, which has never happened. Our meeting lasted two hours and is a preview of tomorrow's events. During the first hour, Indi asked me potential questions for tomorrow and I answered them with ease. We decided that I will need more chapters in Geraldine than I proposed. One of these chapters has been informally titled mea culpa. In it I will need to write about everything that is problematic with Geraldine, but doesn't really contribute to any claims that I make in the dissertation. This can be compared to the warning notices that are printed on things like beach balls in 30 languages: don't eat this beach ball, this beach ball isn't a life saving devise, don't let an infant sleep with or on this beach ball, this beach ball will not protect you in the event of a shark attack, this beach ball will not protect you from developing skin cancer... and the like. This chapter is to protect me so that when some smarty pants of the future decides to read a part of my dissertation, he can't say "but you didn't do this and now the whole thing is invalid." Ah, the fine print.
The second half of my meeting with Indi today was devoted to my data. I think this was the first time that Indiana actually read through my data (and it will likely be the only time that he will). When we got to my extensions of 'hand'-terms, Indi started laughing. Finally, the moment I've anticipated for months occurred. Indi read my Southern Paiute data in which the term for 'hand' has been extended to 'masturbator.'When I found this data in February, I laughed hard, then collected myself and entered it into my data base along with every other extension out there for 'hand.' Those of you that have been reading my blogs since the beginning know that Indi is very difficult to interpret and he plays the role of "professor" very well. He's slow to talk, always looks like he's thinking about something important, and never says what he really thinks. The laughter today was another layer of the professor facade peeling away in which I can say that after being my advisor for 5 years, Indi is finally warming up to me. I think I also got over the fact that I have to both write about the term masturbate in my dissertation and talk about it when I defend my dissertation next spring. Apparently this small detail also made it okay for Indiana to drop an f-bomb in my presence about an hour later when he said that he would "F***ing go to the board and demand that they give [me] a contract" at this fine university next year if I don't land a position of the post doc or tenure track variety. Wow. I guess that means Indiana officially approves of me, my work, and that we are a team. Bring on the stuffed animals!
I had a nightmare a few nights ago that I was in a library with my committee for my prospectus defense. They asked me the first question and I stuttered and struggled to answer. Dumbledore declared that I wasn't ready and with that, the whole committee stood up and dramatically left the room. I started screaming German obscenities, remembered that half of my committee speaks German and then threw myself on the floor, shoved my face into the furry coat of a random dog that just happened to be in the library and cried until I woke up. Dreams are silly. :) Thankfully there will be no dogs at tomorrow's event, we will not be in the library, and any German that we speak during the defense will be related to Geraldine.
Between now and the impromptu department party this evening, I will prepare a plethora of snazzy charts for displaying my data while singing Lady Gaga. Good thing no one is around to hear the cacophony.
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