When I envisioned the various possible situations for my dissertation defense, I had never imagined a scenario in which it would take place over Zoom and during a pandemic no less. Yet, despite all the craziness happening in the world, my defense took place as scheduled, albeit without the audience I had hoped for (a special thank you to HollyWitchey and Debby Tenenbaum for attending while respecting the rules of social distancing as they sat on opposite ends of the room).
Monday, March 16th
When I walked into Mather House 100 at 1:30 pm—a half an hour before the start of my defense—my advisor Erin Benay, gloved and armed with Clorox wipes, had already sanitized all of the surfaces. With the entire room disinfected, we were ready to set up our Zoom call with the three committee members who were participating remotely. Plan A was to use the “share screen” option on Zoom to display my PowerPoint and for me to give the formal part of my presentation off-screen. Alas, we had some technical difficulties, so we quickly settled on plan B: to direct the laptop at the large projection screen at the front of the room and for me to deliver my presentation from the podium. Plan B ended up working just fine. After my presentation, Prof. Benay and I situated ourselves in front of her laptop (sitting three feet apart—the guidelines for social distancing were different in mid-March than they are now) and we proceeded with the public and private questioning by the committee. Less than two hours later, my defense was done. I was relieved. While it was certainly not the dissertation defense I had anticipated, I am very pleased with how it went. We had a productive discussion of my work, and I left feeling confident about how to proceed with adapting aspects of my research into future publications. In these unforeseen times of global crisis, we are fortunate that such technologies like Zoom exist. It would have been a very different and much more disappointing ending to my career at CWRU if my defense had been postponed or worse yet, canceled. I am truly grateful for the effort my committee went through to accommodate the circumstance and to ensure that everything ran as smoothly as it did. When we are finally on the other side of this pandemic, I look forward to celebrating my doctorate with all those that supported me along the way!
Kylie Fisher