D-day come and gone

Yesterday (3/10) was my PhD defense. After several years of research, months of dissertation writing, then a final week of reviewing my material, it did feel anti-climactic. The talk went smoothly, and the following near-two hours of "closed door session" with my committee went pretty well. It was less of the grilling session we're sometimes conditioned to fear and more of a conversation about my research, the mechanisms, how the system works, the relevance of my work, and re-explaining points from my talk. After getting kicked out for a 10 minutes, it was nice coming back in and receiving hand-shakes and congratulations. But, I was expecting it. Yes, I was confident - I knew my stuff and almost felt on autopilot during the open talk. In the session, while I couldn't answer every question, at no time did I feel out of my realm or frustrated. :) And then it was over and I talked for an hour with my advisor, reviewing the discussion and talking some about the future. I was pretty much fried by that time, after 3 hours of being on my feet, pacing, pointing, talking, thinking, and staying on my toes. And, my quads were aching, too. A long, tiring day that I wish had started with my defense at the beginning instead of at 3pm. But, I can't complain, as I PASSED!

Now, it is on the rapid down-hill slope towards graduation. Just a few minor changes to my dissertation, along with incorporating a few final "towards manuscript submission" changes to the aim 3 paper/chapter. That won't take much time. It'll probably take more pain to deal with some bureaucratic screw-ups that have to be cleared up before the school will graduate me.

Now I need to start seriously thinking about the future. My advisor and I have had more "future" talks - he's trying to get me a post-doc slot within our center so that I don't have to be covered under a grant of his. And, collaboration opportunities with other PIs are opening up. But, the big question is how long I want to stay here. Of course, my PI pointed out that plenty of PhD graduates continued with a post-doc here before obtaining a tenure track position elsewhere. This is a top program within my discipline with excellent name cache and a structure that is very hard to compete with. It wouldn't be hard to show separation from my advisor while benefiting from staying at the same place. At the minimum, I've got to go visit the location that interested me last fall - again my advisor brought up the option to commute between the two places. It is only ~2 hours apart. While a daily basis would get old quick, a couple of days a week could happen. Now is the time to start seriously considering my options.

It sure would be nice to be somewhere warmer, though....springtime and still in the 40s. ugh!