Thanks everyone for your kind words and congratulations! It feels SO good to have my defense over with. I still have a lot of work to do, however. I need to make a lot of revisions and perfections to my thesis before I officially submit it; I need to prepare a poster to present at the department's annual graduate research contest (for money!!); and I need to prepare an oral presentation for the same contest--luckily, this presentation can only 15 minutes long tops, whereas my thesis defense was about 1 hour and 10 minutes. Whew! And this all needs to be done within the next two weeks.
I was very, very nervous for my defense. I only finished the powerpoint presentation the night (morning?) before, and couldn't even practice it all the way through before I couldn't stand or talk anymore--it was about 5:30 am. I went to bed, but my brain wouldn't turn off until about 6:30. I slept until a little after 8:00, and was shaky all morning because I was so tired and nervous. Jordan said to think of Kimball running down the hall in just his diaper because he is so excited to get in the bath. It actually really helped!
After some initial projector/laptop technical difficulties, my presentation was underway. My audience was the three profs in my committee, two other profs, a couple of students, and a few family members. I don't consider myself a decent public speaker by any means, but I had the feeling that I was at least doing okay. The questions afterward were not many or difficult. When the guests left and I sat down with my committee, they really surprised me with their comments. They said the presentation was really well done (!), I spake very well, coherently, and calmly (!!), and it was one of the better presentations they had seen (!!!). I was so happy to hear these comments, especially from some professors who had not always been so generous. And the next morning, one of the professors that wasn't on my committee called my cell phone to tell me that he thought both the presentation and the thesis were "exceptional". That made me happy.
They gave me a lot of little things to work on, nothing big, but it will take a few more days. My thesis will be better because of it, and closer to publication. While I have a lot more stress ahead before I can rest easy, the pubic speaking part is out of the way, and that was the biggest obstacle. Well, I guess writing the thesis was the biggest part, but the defense was definitely the scariest and what I was always working towards, so I'm glad it's done. Now I know I'm getting this degree. There were a few times when I thought I wouldn't be able to do it. Like right after I had Kimball and my adviser decided to retire on me. Or when the same adviser made me change my focus a bazillion times or told me not to use the data I spent all summer collecting. Just about everything that could get in my way did, but somehow I got it done. I credit my current adviser and all the support from my friends and family who kept saying "you can do it!". So thank you all.
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