A Brief Mention of My Thesis Defense

As I reflect on my graduate school career that began only yesterday, I have to say it turned out to be pretty dang easy. It was a challenge, but the kind I like, the kind that stretches me a little, not the kind that makes me regret being born. It wasn't entirely devoid of stress, but I seem to have experienced a lot less than most of my classmates and colleagues. I credit that to my therapist a few years ago who said that his experience successfully procrastinating as an undergraduate made him less stressed in graduate school. That advice entered into my heart like few words ever have. For the most part, I've just gone with the flow and known that everything would be all right. One example of that would be how I was at lunch with some of my classmates and colleageus a few weeks ago, and they talked about revising their theses and scheduling their defenses, and I thought Oh yeah, I better get on that, so I made a few more revisions and sent my thesis chair Charles what I had, and he said it was good to go and I got my defense scheduled before most of the others. We held it last Wednesday.

Calling it a "defense" is very misleading, inexplicable even. I didn't have to defend anything. Charles assured me before it started that I would pass, and then I stepped out for twenty minutes while the committee deliberated, and then I came back in and Charles broke with tradition by assuring me that they'd already decided I would pass and my answers to their subsequent questions wouldn't affect that one way or another. So it was as rigged as pro wrestling or the 2020 US election. They asked about future plans for schooling, career, publication, whatever, and I mentioned how one of my thesis stories ("Do Robots Dream of Electric Horse Debugger?") won second place in the graduate fiction category of the USU Writing and Art Contest, so that's going to be published in the Sink Hollow literary magazine, but I mentioned that I had to cut some stuff to fit within the length requirement, so Charles said he could talk to the editor and get them to publish the whole thing. Rigged, I tell you. One of my classmates and colleagues won third place, but the person who beat us both isn't even an English major, so that's kind of embarrassing.

I also mentioned that I was hoping to stay at USU in some capacity and also for some kind of online teaching job so I wouldn't have to move but could if I changed my mind, and committee member Jessica mentioned a sudden opening to teach concurrent enrollment English 1010 broadcasts for high school students and I emailed her about it and she recommended me and someone else explained the job and I told them both I was interested and that was on Friday so I don't know if the job is mine just like that, but it might be. I hope it is because job searching makes me regret being born.