The Defense!

 Last Friday, I had my oral examination for my PhD. The day seemed to come so quickly. In early January, I scheduled my defense for March 8, but the schedule changed and the defense was rescheduled to February 15. That started my weeks of quality time with Powerpoint.

Cecilie organized the refreshments and set them up with the help of my mom. They worked hard and made a very nice spread. It was nice to have family and friends there with me.

My advisor, Professor Roger Howe, introduced me and clarified that this project was 'really hard'. I was really nervous starting out. 

I normally settle into a nice groove when I start giving a presentation. In my introductory material, I talked about how field programmable gate arrays are everywhere - including in the Mars Rover located in France! I have no recollection of saying that the Mars Rover is in France instead of on Mars but my quote has been confirmed by too many sources for me to doubt it.

I went through all my slides at a good pace. I was excited to get to the end of my talk. The public then began asking their questions. I have been to a number of defenses where they get only one or two questions. Questions for me just kept coming and coming. Finally, my committee chair, Prof. Tom Kenny, closed off the questioning period and excused the public. I came back in for the closed session and my committee grilled me for a half hour with lots of suggestions on things to include in my written dissertation. They were all good comments and some interesting problems to think about. After all my committee asked questions, they dismissed me for a few minutes to discuss my fate. After a few minutes, the professors started walking out. As they passed, they shook my hand and said congratulations and I knew I had passed. What a relief to be done!

I then had a celebratory lunch at the Palo Alto Creamery with Cecilie, my mom, the Bains, and the Spurlocks. We pulled out all the stops with delicious burgers and milkshakes. Bill had all the chocolate they could find put into a milkshake.

We gave Rushton an earlier birthday present from us and we had a friend for the day.

That afternoon, Cecilie, my mom, and I went to Windy Hill to have some outside time. We played with the panoramic pictures on the iPhone.

The picture below is of a happy Scott.

With my mom in town, we hit up some classic Stanford sites like Hoover Tower. We saw the main Quad, Memorial Auditorium, and the library. It was great February weather.