Woohoo! Congratulations! Luck with your defence. 
And now they’ve set a date for the defence. 24th August. :eek: :eek:
I think I’ll just sit in this corner and freak out a bit now.
Nah, don’t worry, I’m sure it’ll go swimmingly! You might not be Doc Angua yet, but soon you’ll want to change your username!
It’s good that you achieved your aim. I’m two years and eight months in, and I feel like I’m going to need twice as much to complete my work.
I’d better get back to work… 
I have a friend who is almost finished with her dissertation. I keep threatening her to get some friends, sit on on her orals, and repeatedly chant “Deeeeeeefense, Deeeeeeeefnse” while she is speaking.
Congrats and good luck on the orals.
I’m officially getting nervous now; the viva/defence date has been set for the 24th August, and I have a job interview for a postdoc position in Paris on the 29th. I’ve spent most of Thursday (when I found out about the job) and Friday freaking out over everything. Heck, I’m still freaking out, and its only due to Bonzer’s reassurances that I can do it, that I’m still sane. My mum warning me constantly that I probably won’t get the job really isn’t helping either.
Angua, you’ll be fine. Just follow this helpful advice.
Congratulations, from a lowly non-degreed technologist! If it weren’t for you guys designing stuff, we wouldn’t have anything to do! (Yes, I know, you’re not in electronics, but same diff…)
Congrats.
The best advice I got before my defense was “Note the exact time you start – so you can see how long it takes for you to realize you’re the person in the room who knows the most about your topic.”
It turned out to be five minutes.
Angua, you smart thing, you! You’ll be absolutely fine.
Oh, and good luck for the job, I bet you bowl them over with your wit, intellignece and knowledge!
As I told you before, the thing to keep in mind for defenses is that a) your committee wouldn’t have let you go ahead and schedule yours if they didn’t think you would pass it with flying colors; and b) they are nothing more than a sadistic socioanthropological hazing ritual designed to freak out poor grad students, before you are welcomed to the Club of the Initiated.
Just remember the old stage fright trick of picturing your committee in their underwear, and you’ll be fine.
And after that, PARIS! Yeah, London would be a shorter commute for you guys, but among the other reasonable options, Paris would be pretty sweet, no? And I bet lots of your friends would be happy to come visit you. 
How long is the postdoc, and when would it start?
You’ll do just fine.
Your mother is wrong. Look at how well you’ve done thus far.
Thanks guys; the reassurance is amazingly helpful. 
Nice one. I know, intellectually, that I know the most about the subject out of all my committee (hell, the internal member of my committee keeps on asking me for my opinions etc on another project he wants me involved in), and as just hit me as we were having lunch – I was able to correct my advisor about the topic at a scientific meeting in front of about 50 people, so I can’t be that badly off. I just freak out sometimes!
Eva, if I started imagining the committee in their underwear, I could get rather distracted! 
The postdoc, were I to get it, would be pretty darned sweet. It’s intially a two year appointment, and would start probably by October, as they mentioned in the ad that they needed someone to start by the beginning of November. Oh, and all my friends would be more than welcome to come and visit. Bonzer’s quite relishing the idea of me getting this post too, I think he’s rather taken with the idea of visiting Paris on a regular basis, although obviously, London would be better, this would be an opportunity of a lifetime.
I’m quite amazed that I’ve even made it onto their shortlist to be honest; I sent my application in the day after I submitted my thesis, two of my referees were on holiday, and so didn’t send their letters of reccomendation in till about a week after the deadline, leaving me thinking that as I hadn’t fulfilled all their requirements (i.e. application and letters of reccomendation by the 1st August), I’d be passed over. Instead, I get an email inviting me to Paris to give a short informal presentation about my work, at whichever date would be most convenient for me in a given two week period. Sweet. I just hope that its the sort of interview where they’re checking that I don’t have two heads and am relatively sane before thei offer me the job, rather than it being I still have to compete for the job. Fingers crossed.
Ginger, I keep on having to remind myself that mum doesn’t know the first thing about academia, and the fact that they’ve invited me over, at a date that’s convenient for me, from a foreign country, probably means that its a damned good sign. Just have to remember to take my passport!
I don’t want to jinx you, but hey, I am actually in the process of planning a trip that would put me in Paris potentially at the beginning of October. You’ve got my e-mail - keep me posted!
Now this part is what you really have to worry about. 
Just remember - normal people are boring! And hey, if you were a mainstream, sane person, would you have ended up in your field to begin with? Insanity may actually be a plus!
Wooo!
I did say relatively sane, as in sane compared to er, someone really crazy.
Would you describe the setting and what happens in a defense, how long it might go on for, and so on?
Is the “defense” the “orals” I keep running into in crossword puzzles?
Our defenses are closed defenses, and not really defenses in the US style of things. They’re called a viva voce, i.e. an examination by word of mouth. Essentially, you have two examiners, someone tenured, or in special circumstances a senior postdoc, from within the research group whom you haven’t worked with (the internal examiner), the other is someone from outside the University, but works within the field, or at least closely related to the field, and again, is someone you haven’t worked with. They can ask you questions about your thesis, and about any of the tangential science related to the thesis.
Post viva, they send you out whilst they deliberate. They then call you back in and give you their decision; you either pass with minor corrections, pass with major corrections (e.g. a rewrite of a chapter), or rewrite and resubmission. The last one rarely happens; you have to be really really bad to get to submitting the thesis and need to resubmit.
Thanks.
I said a little prayer for your success. Hope that’s okay.
That’s fine. Thank you very much; your prayers and good thoughts are appreciated.