Doctor Waye

Today was my dissertation defense. For those of you who don't know what that is, the Ph.D. process is something like this: 1) Take graduate classes; 2) Take a qualifying exam consisting of written and oral tests; 3) Propose your dissertation topic and research and select a committee of 5 professors; 4) Do the research; 5) Write up a disseratation and defend it. At the defense, I gave a 45 minute presentation of my research and then the audience was dismissed while my committee asked questions for about 30-45 minutes. I was then dismissed and they deliberated to decide if I had done what I proposed and if I deserved a Ph.D.

It went well and am now just paperwork away from being Doctor Waye. This was the last major hurdle for my degree. If this was a 110 meter hurdles, I would have just passed the last hurdle and have a 15 meter sprint to the end. I have to make a few minor adjustments to my written dissertation and then upload it to a publisher and turn in about 10 documents to the graduate school. Other than that, I am pretty much done. One big thing to check off the list. Hooray!