Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten the alphabet. Yet.  ABD is how I will define myself for the next few months or so.  In the world of academia, ABD stands for “All But Dissertation”.

I defended my dissertation proposal yesterday – successfully!  Not the entire dissertation.  That will hopefully come in January.  The proposal stage is rumored to be the most difficult, because that’s where your committe gives you the go-ahead on actually doing your dissertation work.  You write the first three chapters of it (the intro – yes, that gets its own chapter – the literature review, and the proposed methodology).  Your committee reads it, rips it apart, and sends you along to clean up the pieces.

I have a really solid committee of really good scholars, and more importantly, they all play nicely in the sandbox together, and no one feels a need to trump anyone else, and there’s no ego battles in the room.  That’s good, because I’d hate to have to look at people older than me and tell them to grow up.  My chair and I had a strategy meeting on Monday to decide who would go first and set the tone.  We decided on Dr. C, who is just the most awesome professor.  He is very go-with-the-flow, not a boat rocker, and I think he likes me so much because I have initiative and he doesn’t have to hold my hand.  We figured he’d be my lightweight committee member who would throw out a suggestion, and that would be it.

Wrong.  It was his turn, and he said “How much time do I have?”  If your ‘easy’ person makes that statement, then that should be a sign that things are going to go downhill quickly.

Thankfully, they did not.  He tore my methodology apart, but not in a bad way.  I knew it sucked, and he, along with the rest of the committee, made some great suggestions.  Hell, they told me to cut half of it, and simplified the other half.  They told me to do less.  I like that.

They approved, they signed the form, and I’ve successfully defended my dissertation proposal.  I finished the copy edits and minor revisions today, and now I’ll go through the list of “Must-do’s”.  That will get sent to the graduate school.  I’ve now crossed over the line from being a doctoral student to being ABD.

Next stop, Dr. Annie.