On the defensive ...

Tomorrow is my proposal defense. What that means is that my dissertation committee sits in a room while I ramble on and on about my dissertation proposal, which they already have a written copy of and they should have read all 57 pages by now.

I am slightly more nervous about this than the Qs (see posts from all of January 2007). In that test, I pretty much new what material would be included and what wouldn't. For this "defense", the professors can ask me anything they want (as long as it somehow relates to my proposed experiments).

The nervousness could also just be caused by the title "Proposal Defense". Why do I need to defend my experiments? It's as though I need to convince these people that my experiments are worthwhile, plausable and interesting. Which, I suppose I do. But could we have a proposal conversation or a dissertation discussion? Just changing the word seems to change the whole tone and maybe even the purpose of the meeting.

Maybe I will bring that up while I am busy being defensive.