A week from Friday, I’m finally going to present six years’ worth of doctoral research to my dissertation committee, and they’ll tell me whether or not it’s enough to warrant a Ph.D. I am given to understand that the process will go something like this:

Which is to say, a lot of frantic running around culminating in a highly formalized event at which my fate will depend on answering potentially arbitrary questions. Maybe involving swallows.

I’m still in the running-around bit, which involves tasks like taking my written dissertation to have the College of Graduate studies check the width of the page margins. So, um, wish me luck.