WAHOOOO!!!

Can you tell I'm excited?  Well, I am!  This past Friday I finally defended my thesis (hence my lack of posting - I had to prepare).  It was sort of surreal.  I mean, I've spent about a year thinking, working, and breathing all things thesis.  For it all to culminate was inevitable, but it came too fast and not fast enough all at the same time.  It's been the weirdest roller coaster of emotions.

Since Patrick has moved back to NH, I was really bummed that he wouldn't be around to see my presentation.  But earlier in the week my mom let the cat out of the bag that they were going to come.  Yay!  They drove up Friday morning in time for my 11:30am defense. 

Considering this defense was for my undergrad work, I had quite the audience.  I made my defense open because I had lots of people who helped and wanted to see the final product.  Including my 5 person committee, there were 15 people there.  The presentation went really smoothly and the audience asked some great questions.  Then the audience was dismissed and I was left to answer my committee's questions.  I was pleasantly surprised that it was more of a conversation than my being drilled with questions.  After that, I was asked to leave the room while they deliberated.

You see, I'm also a member of the Honors College.  And if you do an Honors thesis the committee has to determine if you graduate with no Honors, Honors, High Honors, or Highest Honors.  Being the Type A control freak that I am, I of course wanted Highest Honors.  But the situation with my advisor had the potential to put my work at a lower level than I would have liked.

After deliberating for what felt like forever, I was called back into the room and everyone started hugging me and shaking my hand.  I was trying to see the paper where they wrote down their choice when the head of my department finally told me that I got Highest Honors!  So exciting!  I will now be accepting celebratory gifts!  :-)

My mom, Patrick, and I spent Friday night celebrating but they had to leave on Saturday morning.  I've been spending the rest of the weekend relaxing and catching up on things that I've been missing out on.  I still have some edits to do, but the bulk of the work is over.  Graduation is in three weeks!