The defense went well.  As I mentioned last time, the dissertation technically involves two sections: the public presentation and the private examination.  No one showed up to the presentation, so it all got sort of smushed together in my case.  My chair, John Campbell, sent me out of the room before things started so that the committee could meet in private.  I was brought back in a couple of minutes later, and gave my presentation in just over an hour, punctuated by questions throughout.  I was sent outside again, during which the faculty passed ballots around and presumably chatted a bit about my performance, after which my advisor walked out and greeted me with a “Congratulations, Dr. Landers.”

I went through what I’ll call the Four Stages of Ph.D. Achievement, similar to the Seven (correction: Five) Stages of Grief, but slightly less depressing:

1. Shock:  For about 10 minutes, I just shook hands and said “thank you” to my committee members.  It just wasn’t real yet.
2. Giddiness:  After all, this was the conclusion of 21 years of education.  I am, for the first time in recent memory, not a student, and that kind of closure is a little overwhelming.  Everything seemed just a little funny.  And I couldn’t stop smiling.
3. Eerie Calm:  This meant browsing the Internet and reading on Facebook as if nothing had changed from three hours earlier.
4. Acceptance:  Oh right.  I still have a ton of work.

There are only 25 days until we move, and I have many loose ends to tie up, so there’s actually a ton left to do.  When it comes down to it, the dissertation is just another study, only with higher stakes attached to it, and I still have other studies, grant proposals, and projects to worry about.  Plus packing.

A bright point in the storm: after I dropped off my “final oral dissertation defense” form with the signatures of my committee on it, I decided to drop by my Intro to I/O class currently-in-progress.  My teaching assistant, Stacy, had graciously volunteered to run the final class/review session if I didn’t get done with my defense in time to attend.  When I got there, Stacy was going over one of the worksheets with her back to the door.  As I sat down in a chair at the front behind her, a group started clapping over her talking which quite quickly transformed into a full classroom full of applause.  Which, I have to admit, felt pretty good.

After four rounds of revisions with my advisor, I have sent my 141-page, 24,821-word dissertation to my committee, and have begun the process of scheduling my oral dissertation defense for the first or second week of May.

Yes, it’s happening.

Frankly, it feels a bit unreal.  If all goes well, I will have a new title within a month.  21 years of education will have finally concluded.  And then we’ll be moving into a new house.  That we bought.

I’ve also been in contact with the powers-that-be at Old Dominion (my new job) to get my lab equipment purchased.  It’s looking pretty good.  When all is said and done, I’ll have 1) my office, 2) a miniature film studio, complete with green screen, 3) a graduate student working lab, 4) a presentation area, complete with projector and 100″ screen, and 5) a 20-system configurable computer lab with a master control system/server.  Let the research begin!

As for the unexpected trouble last time, it turns out that there’s not much to worry about.  The flooring allowance can be dealt with by moving it into an addendum, the agreement we need to sign has probably already been signed and I am the victim of a form letter, and considering our cash reserves, a sizable student loan payment doesn’t really matter – it’s just bank policy to source any non-payroll deposit larger than $500.  So there’s not really anything to worry about.

But these things are always so much clearer in hindsight, aren’t they?

Courtesy organichealthblog.com

Problems with the house.  Apparently, there are several “issues” with our mortgage application that the bank only decided to let us know about two weeks before closing.  Well, technically they sent the letter April 8, but it only arrived April 14.  The problem is that they gave us a deadline of April 18 (four days!) for them to have received everything they asked for, which unfortunately is a fairly tall order.

#1) They don’t like our flooring allowance.  We had it written into the contract that the sellers would provide us several thousand dollars in cash in order to replace the floors in the entire house, which are all quite old and/or badly installed.  Because of this, the bank wants us to decrease the sales price of the house by that same amount, which effectively saddles the sellers with double the cost – not only are they giving us that amount, but they will receive that amount less for the sale of the house.  Which doesn’t make any sense to me at all.  Doesn’t that mean that our flooring allowance would cost the sellers double?  Our real estate agent is trying to figure out what to do about this.

#2) An agreement must be signed by the seller, buyer, and selling agent.  They don’t specify what this agreement is or how to get it.  I don’t think this would be that much of a concern except for the four day time limit.

#3) I received a student loan payment in February of a fairly substantial sum.  We don’t need this money for the down payment, but since it’s on my income history, the bank wants documentation of where it came from, as when you have an FHA loan, you can’t use another loan to pay the mortgage loan.  Why not just ignore it?  Why harass me about it!?

Anyway, I’m a little stressed, since all of this comes in the middle of a daily back-and-forth with my advisor on drafts of my completed dissertation, which I am basically working on from the moment I get up to the moment I go to sleep, every day, with short gaps to deal with the class I’m teaching, writing this blog post, and mundane wastes of time like showering or eating.  I called our loan officer, but she has not returned my call.

…

Update 4/15: Apparently mortgage companies use form letters.  Concern #1 can be dealt by moving the verbiage to an addendum.  Apparently if the wording is in the contact itself, it has to be considered part of the sale, but if it’s an addendum, it doesn’t.  It’s times like these that I wish I had a background in law.  Concern #2 was apparently dealt with on the original contract we signed, not that anyone told me that before.  Concern #3 is legitimate, but just involves me sending a fax to prove that the money was from a student loan and not from some other unspecified, nefarious source.  I’m not sure why it matters, but apparently it does!  In any case: situation resolved.  I just wish it could have occurred a week later!

Yes, that’s right – this is the tail end of a dream that I had last night.  That is certainly better than it reflecting a real situation, but it is still not a dream that I prefer to have.  I am guessing that it is the combination of 1) working on my dissertation 8-10 hours each day for the past week or so and 2) reading Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files, which is light fantasy describing a wizard detective in modern Chicago.  Dresden gets chased a lot.  As apparently do I.

Some people try to interpret their dreams.  I suppose such people would say that this dream somehow reflects my beliefs about massive impending deadlines and nearing dissection of my dissertation by my committee followed by a two-hour cross-examination to see if I really know as much as I am supposed to know, and if I don’t, that there’s nothing I can do about it at this point, and my entire life and career would come crashing down, and I would likely have to work in a Wendy’s.  Good thing I don’t believe in interpreting dreams, eh?