thesis defense

so, i'm curious whether any of my blogging friends have ever had a thesis defense?

i have one, on july 27th. it feels like impending doom. the whole process is entirely mysterious. i sort of thought my committee and i would get together and talk about the process, what sort of questions that they would ask, even how long the thing lasts (two hours, three hours, four hours?), etc. apparently this is not the case. i've emailed twice, and my director said no. (my email was quite mellow the first time "hey let's get a drink", and fairly frantic the second "i'm scared out of my mind. help me." well, sort of like that.) i've also emailed/facebooked and even text messaged the other nonfiction folks to ask them what their defense questions were, what the defenses were like. nothing--absolutely no response. i'm beginning to wonder if there's an affidavit involved, or some sort of weird secrecy code or maybe, it's like on harry potter. directly after your defense, you drink some kind of drink and forget everything.

anyway, it's all really quite strange. i'm supposed to be spending these next two weeks preparing for the defense, but it's pretty hard to prepare for something so vague and unknown. especially when what i'm writing is creative writing: how can one defend such a thing? i went to the beginning of somebody's defense once (the public can only be there 30 minutes--then the secret part starts...see i tell you; it's weird.) and some guy in the audience asked him how his writing related to the metaphysical poets. i don't even know who the metaphysical poets are. it all feels strangely like the literature GRE (which I took last fall and got a 38% on...impressive, huh?) The test was on all of world literature! So basically, my friends and I just took shots in the dark as to what to read and study. This is even worse--it seems like all of writing and also all of religion (my topic) are up for grabs. Two very big topics, if I do say so myself.

i did sort of have a thesis defense at wheaton, but not really--basically your readers just read and approve or don't and you meet with them. we also had oral comprehensive exams--which were not-so-low key, but the upside was we did these with two other people and also all got to spend the weekend at a retreat center (and my group had sarah vlz in it, who's super smart, and a guy named dave who talks a lot...aka cha ching.) we did, however, also have a written comprehensive exam--which was very difficult (though strangely rewarding). most of the people in my class/year all got together every single monday night for an entire semester to study for this (and then nearer to the actual exam, we got together a bunch more nights.) we all split up the readings and taught each other. it was great--but again, i had a group to share the intensity with, and we had a clear set of books and lectures to study from.

well, i figure my options for july 27th are a.)accidentally create a poster that says my defense is july 28, so noone really comes b.) pretend to be very sick (wait, i don't even have to pretend!) c.) spend the next two weeks memorizing as many cool terms as i can (Starting with the metaphysical poets.) oh heavens.