A very busy month!

It's been nail-biting time, as well. For my dissertation committee, I am required to have at least 4 professors but have had the darndest time getting a fourth.

My original fourth committee member (whom I didn't really want on my committee this time for various reasons - not the least of which is the fact she hasn't responded to any emails since early 2002, no matter how desperate) has been AWOL since the end of the Spring Semester. By that I mean, not even the Ed Psych department knows where she is at the moment. I've emailed, mailed regular mail to her house, left mail in her physical university mailbox, etc.

Meanwhile, I have been contacting about 10 other faculty to see if they would take pity and sit on my committee for two weeks from dissertation reading to sitting in the defense room for two hours July 19. Lots of NO's: I'm out of town, I'm up to my neck in projects this summer, etc. No YES's.

Last Friday (June 25) was the deadline for me to get the final four names to our department secretary to put in the defense date application. By 3:00 that afternoon, I had still not had any firm commitment from any professor, but I put the old AWOL member's name down just to be safe and handed it in to the secretary. After that, I stopped by Klaus Witz's office, one of my "10 other faculty" who hadn't replied to two emails, and found the man in. (In person, it's usually harder to say no!) When he heard my name, he said, "I just emailed you. Yes, I'm willing to do it!" (A guillotine victim hearing of his reprieve, his head on the block, could be no more relieved than I!)

So I rushed back to the departmental secretary, who had just started typing everything up and told her the good news. We crossed off the AWOL professor's name and put in Dr. Witz's name. Now all (!) that remains for me to do is get my dissertation draft to my committee on July 5 for the July 19 defense. It's very close to the wire, and I could have used at least another month in the best of all possible worlds to write a quality dissertation, but this way I at least get to keep one old committee member who will lose his U. of Illinois status August 15.

In the midst of my "Groundhog Day" movie life for the past couple of months, I have been involved in two weddings: one last weekend and one this weekend of a couple who are very good friends. In fact, the husband taught ESL in Arabia in 1995, the same year I was there teaching. War buddies make long-term friends, so they say, and working in Arabia isn't much different than living through a war (and I'm not just talking about the recent terrorist attacks)! They've been living together (very monogamously) since about 1994, so both sets of parents are hugely relieved!

Back to the dissertation, but it's always good to share good news!

Paul