Closed defense

The process of defending a PhD is much like the process of getting a PhD: long and circuitous. There are three main hurdles to clear after meeting the minimum requirements and before receiving the long awaited Dr. title. First, write a dissertation. Second, defend your dissertation to your committee. Third, defend your dissertation to the general public.
Writing a dissertation is long and tricky. The goal is to put all of the work you did in graduate school into the broader context and make a case for your contributions the compendium of global knowledge. My dissertation weighs in at 132 pages of text, though to be fair about half of this was already written in the form of my papers. I finished it about two weeks ago and sent it to my committee. They then read it and prepared questions of things that were unclear or unsupported by my data.
Yesterday, I met with my committee to defend my dissertation. They asked me all their questions and made some very helpful suggestions of what they saw as the strengths and weaknesses of my work. Our discussion was quite positive and they congratulated me on a well written dissertation. To wish me luck in my defense Mom and Dad sen me this cookie bouquet. It is very cute and the unanimous opinion of 5 PhDs and more aspiring PhDs is that cookie bouquets are the best type of bouquet.
Because the committee found my work sound, I have the opportunity to defend my dissertation to the public in October. Then, after turning many redundant forms I will officially be Dr. Cutler. There is still about a month to go and quite a bit to get done in that time, but it is exciting to be getting close to the end.