Dr. Papa!

I'm behind on kid stuff here again (like Halloween, for instance), but absolutely must pause to say,

CONGRATULATIONS, PAUL R. BILGER, PhD!

276 pages of awesome!

Yes, today was the day we've been waiting for and working toward: the day Paul defended his dissertation! Next stop, cap & gown...

In all seriousness, this was a huge day for our family. Mostly, of course, for Paul, who has shown incredible tenacity and resilience through what turned out to be a protracted and fairly fraught process. The project, the committee, the philosopher himself all having gone through enormous and important changes since the beginning of this journey.

But wow. He did it. HE did it!

I spent yesterday baking cookies to offer at the defense, as is the custom in academia. I considered having the kids make cut-out cookies with me, but decided that might be just a wee bit too much of a bribe. :) 

So instead, homemade Oreos and garam masala snickerdoodles. Yum.

The plan was originally that I would wait in my office while Paul did his thing; his  nerves have been running understandably high, and I didn't want to make that worse. But, ten minutes before, he asked if I would accompany him after all. Of course! So we packed up the cookies and straightened his tie (my dad's favorite red silk--it brings us luck!), and headed to Sparks building.

How to describe what happened next without reducing it to blithering superlatives? Not sure I can, and not sure that I should! It was, in a word, mesmerizing. 

Remember, please, that I know little about Philosophy (an embarrassment of mine), and even less about Fichte, Paul's subject, so no, I wouldn't say I "followed" the conversation exactly. 

But I can and do recognize brilliance when I see it. And for the record: my husband is a brilliant, brilliant man.

They asked him to give a short presentation to contextualize the work at the beginning, which he did with flourish and aplomb, gesticulating wildly as he does when he teaches or when talking about a subject about which he is passionate. To be honest, I could only watch in little glimpses. I sat back from the table, to Paul's side, facing his committee. If I look at them, will they turn me to stone? No, of course not, but boy was I intimidated in that room!

After the presentation, each of his four committee members spent about 15 minutes asking him questions about his work, and I did not see him flounder or falter once. It was one of the most thrilling things I have ever witnessed--the way he pulled from not just his knowledge of a particular thinker or text, but from all over the discipline, across many traditions, making a cogent, persuasive case for how and why this work--that is, Paul's work--offers something unique and important to the field.

There was a moment in which Paul described the experience of feeling Fichte's actual thinking process present in the text as he was reading. Honestly, this is what listening to Paul was like for me, and, I'm guessing, for the others in the room: you could actually feel and see his mind at work.

And yes, there were some tough questions and some real critique, but if he was rattled, he hid it well. 

Then, it was time for us to wait in the hall while they decided his fate. :) I could feel his relief even then, and though I (and I think he) knew --absolutely KNEW--that he had passed, we didn't speak that certainty to each other for fear of...oh, just don't jinx it! We've come this far!

When the door opened, and his chair extended a hand shake, I knew he had done it. And indeed, they welcomed him back into that conference room with smiles and congratulations and a string of superlatives. "I liked your Fichte better than I like Fichte!" "This is among the best writing on this subject I've encountered." "We were all, to a one, incredibly impressed by this defense." "Superb." 

He has some structural revisions to attend to, and some tweaking and clarifying to do in his introduction, but really, small stuff. Easy stuff. 

This has been a long post, and that is as it should be. It is important for me to chronicle this not only so that the kids can someday know what a huge accomplishment this was for their father, but also because Paul deserves to know exactly how proud I am of him; how proud I have ALWAYS been of him, and how much I love and respect him for the choices he has made that allowed him to have a healthy and happy family AND this hard-won degree.

You did it, sweetie! Congratulations!

Post-defense cheer!

Post-defense relief!

This was entirely Rudy's concept and execution. Those are penne noodles spelling "Papa."

"We need to make papa a lightening bolt card because he is a super hero." 

 

I'll say he is! We love you, Dr. Papa!