Doctor Payne

At roughly 4pm eastern time, Meg was called back into the room she had just finished defending her dissertation in and was congratulated as "Doctor Payne". We're all very much beaming with pride. I would have ridden a plane twice as long to see what I was able to see today.

We slept in late this morning (well, it was 7am pacific time); I woke up just after 10. We soon went to Denny's for a fabulous breakfast and then caught a university shuttle to the center of campus. We waited in the Philosophy department's library while Meg had a meeting with her advisor, and then we headed for the law library, to an office where she would defend. The university had trouble getting the conference call to work. One professor was phoning in from England, and one locally in south Florida. So Jason had the idea to use his cell phone to use "freeconferencecall.com" or something like it, and it went off perfectly! Good job Jason! Since the room was so small, Mom and Meg's friend and her baby stayed behind at the Philosophy dept. and listened in on the conference call via my cell, so there was no risk of a baby crying. We had to keep absolutely silent (no interjections - but laughing along with a joke was okay) and it went a lot faster than I thought it would. Meg spent about twenty minutes describing her work and why she chose this particular project and how it was relevant and distinctive in the field.

Three other grad students watched along with Jason, Dad and I as the five professors grilled her on some finer points. It was all very interesting and neat to watch. The dissertation was on how truth is communicated through fiction and why that's important. There was a lot of questions about Plato, since she talked for three of her chapters about what he and other folks had to say about this. But one of the questions asked brought up her example from Remember WENN, how she found out about James Buchanan's vice president through an episode, and was able to mention the show and Rupert Holmes specifically in the defense. :) That made be smile!

The questions took about an hour and a half... and the deliberation afterwords (which no one could sit in on) took about two minutes. Congratulations, Meg!

We celebrated by going out to TGI Friday for a fabulous dinner... steak, broccoli, salad and mango lemonade... mmm! We're just about to go down to the hotel pool for a swim before we rest and then watch the new episode of Foyle's War at 1 AM. Hey, that's only 10 PM pacific time... which we're still on! :)

Jp