Oh, Happy Day

Today was a great day. My paper is in, and who knows if it makes sense, but I am done with it. Next up, I defend my paper on March 3. I can't remember what I have shared about this process, but this last part is important - similar to a defence of a dissertation, only with a lot less experience and a lot more people to judge your performance. Oh, and this is what determines if you can remain in the program or of essentially you fail! On the up side my presentation only needs to be about 15 min, whereas a dissertation is much longer. So for those of you who have no understanding of this process I am going to provide an analogy that might be more relatable. I checked this out with others today and they happen to agree with my analogy.
Candidacy is like pregnancy:
You find out you are pregnant and you are super excited (go with me on this -don't get caught up in the details). This is like the part where you begin research. You are excited everything seems cool, but you don't really talk about it to a lot of people - you don't want to jinx yourself. Then you get morning sickness. This is when you can't find the research you really need - it just doesn't exist. In the long run this is a good thing, but when you are trying to write a literature review - literature is a key component.
Then morning sickness subsides and you start writing. It starts out fun - organizing and sorting. Pretty soon your head (belly) starts hurting and you realize you have no more room for anything in there.
Then you go in for some tests (this is the first draft) only to realize everything isn't exactly as it should be. You panic, but then the doctor (Ph.D) tells you that there is something you can do (revise). This is where it gets a little sticky - because instead of the dr. stepping in you have to perform the procedure - how weird is that! I guess this is because we are training to take over for the dr?
Ok, so then you take care of the problem and get ready for birth - pack your bags, set up the crib, shop for supplies, arrange dog sitters, mom's plane ticket (this is the massive revisions). Lastly you go into labor, only this part arrives before you are ready - hey this is how both of mine went. I mean you had the due date all along, but the last steps seemed to take longer than expected.
Then the baby arrives (this is turning in the paper) and you worry that everyone will think your baby is ugly - not a little ugly but ugly in such a way that they may actually get sick. In real life no mother thinks her baby is ugly - maybe in hindsight, but never that first moment, but with this paper everyone thinks their work might be ugly.
The defense is like (at least from what I can tell) the coming out ceremony for the child - a blessing day, christening, first family gathering, first doctor visit, etc. This is where you hope no one actually says the baby is ugly, but you think it not out of the question.
I think this is a pretty good analogy, but the gestation of a candidacy paper is a bit shorter (about 6 months). The 2nd draft ended up being 40 pages with $44.10 worth of copy costs to make all of the copies I needed to pass out. Hopefully no one will tell me my baby is ugly. I worked very hard to get it to this point.