Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

Hooray! My dissertation chair is not dead, and he’s read about halfway through the latest (I’m calling it the "final") draft. Unfortunately, his 40-something wife is pregnant with twins, and even though the official full-term date is mid-June, she has already been to the hospital 4 times. If she can last, they are planning on inducing pregnancy on May 17th, just 5 days after I defend. Oh, and my dissertation director is on sabbatical, and I haven’t spoken to him in a while either, but he’s given me feedback, and I’ve made all the changes he suggested. The other two committee members? Haven’t heard a peep out of either of them.

Best case scenario? They are all so out of it and feel so guilty about their lack of attention to my many attempts to contact them, that they don’t ask any challenging questions, and they just sign off on… easy peasy. Even better case scenario: My chair’s wife has two healthy twins at the exact time of my scheduled defense, meaning that he can’t show up and just signs off on it later in the day!

Worst case scenario? They all stay up late the night before reading like mad looking for things to critique. They all show up grouchy and ready to grill me. They see things they hadn’t noticed before that they hate. They berate me for my shoddy research and writing skills. I fail my Ph.D. and end up jobless and homeless, unloved and on the streets of Memphis, addicted to meth.