Thursday, April 26, 2007 at 8:08:45 PM
So it's 4pm, Thursday afternoon. I'm sitting off in the corner of room 205 (Hotchkiss), kind of dozing because I've gotten about 6 hours of sleep in the last 3 days. After a few minutes of nodding, I hear some steps. So I look up and start to get my thoughts in order. A few more minutes pass by and the entire committee has assembled itself. Now it's time to fry Syed.
I'll be the first to admin it. My written work was kind of light. And it's such an odd thing because I'm really not a lousy writer, it's just that things that I don't want to do, well, I just can't do. But at least I had something down own paper. I mean, it's a creative project, so the most important thing isn't what you read, it's what you see. That's how I see things, anyway. Ok, so fast-forward after an hour of some pretty solid questioning. I was actually really surprised that it lasted that long. But it's not like it was an unpleasant experience; all I did was talk about Search Kindly the whole time.
5 o'clock rolls around and I'm asked to leave the room...and shut the door behind me. Now what. So I head over to the stairwell and start texting pretty much every name that comes to mind.
"60-minute defense, have been waiting 10 minutes to hear back"
Next message:
"Have been waiting 20 minutes"
Next message:
"I've been sitting in this stairwell for 33 minutes...I'm starting to get a little worried"
Finally, I am asked to come back to the room...
Pause.
Pause.
Pause.
"Congratulations, you're going to graduate."
And now....I must go celebrate. But before I do that, I want to really, really thank all of you who wrote in to my professors and supported this project. I was told that over 40 people wrote in, and they were all really warm and heartfelt. You guys rock.
As I'm sure you all know, none of this could have been possible without you. Thanks.
