I'm a Master now!

Thank you all for your nice words. It turned out that I was way more stressed out about the defense than I actually had thought and reading all of your notes this morning felt really really nice.

The defense went well, for a defense. It's a pretty rough experience in general, though. I'd been working on the paper for a long time now and was pretty happy with how far I had taken it. I knew they would ask me tough questions...but they asked me VERY TOUGH questions. VERY TOUGH questions. A couple of times, I almost interrupted myself mid-sentence to say, But...but...we TALKED about this, SEVERAL months ago...and we AGREED that this is how it had to be done... But it was a defense and that's how it goes. You defend your project. And I was lucky to have very nice people on my committee, which is not always the case, you know.

When they asked me to come back into the room so that they would inform me about their decision, my heart was racing and there was this weird buzzing noise in my ears. Two of my committee members swear that each one of them said congratulations. But I have no memory of hearing anyone congratulating me. All I heard was the name of the professor who would be in charge of reading through my paper after I made the revisions. God knows why, I assumed that I failed. Said thank you and walked over to my office. And started to cry. One of my committee members came by, about ten minutes after, to congratulate me in person. When he saw me there, crying my eyes out, he got this really confused look on his face and asked: But why are you crying?! That was a great defense. You answered all the questions so well...And I said, well, yeah, but I didn't pass. His reaction: ?!?!?!!!! But you did!!!

So, yeah, adding tears to an event makes it all the more special, didn't you know.

Being (almost) finished doesn't feel nearly as special as I thought. But I am adding extra letters to my name. I'm a Master now! :D