Defense

On Monday afternoon, I headed to the University of Utah to fulfill my final official act as a grad student: defend my portfolio.

The University of Utah doesn't require a thesis for MS students (which was me) or for US History MA students (I was also US History). As one professor explained it, students were taking too long to graduate because they were finishing their thesis, and since the thesis took too long, they lacked writing samples as they applied to PhD programs. 

Instead, we have to submit a portfolio, which consists of two annotated syllabi, an annotated bibliography, and at least one research paper. So for me, my portfolio included:

• A syllabus of American history since Reconstruction, as though I were teaching a college class. Basically everyone has to make a syllabus on American history through the Civil War or after the Civil War. I'm more familiar with after the Civil War, so that's what I picked.
• A syllabus about This Is the Place Heritage Park. The second syllabus allowed more flexibility, especially since I don't plan to go into teaching, so my syllabus was meant for employees of This Is the Place but was structured like a college class. It had different topics connected to all the village's sites, with lots of relevant books and articles.
• An annotated bibliography, which is basically a description of all the books I read during grad school.
• A research paper from my first semester, which was about This Is the Place Monument and how it omitted important historical people of color, specifically Green Flake and Wakara, and the ways those people were remembered in the past.
• A research paper from last semester. I compared a thinly veiled anti-Mormon speech by Utah's governor, Eli Murray, on the Fourth of July with a speech that Emmeline Wells wrote for the Twenty-Fourth about the contributions of Mormon women—but she did not read her own speech, because it was somewhat taboo in those days for women to speak to mixed audiences.

So at 1:00, I showed up at the room in the Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Building for my defense. I walked in the room and the three members of my committee were sitting at a table, facing another table where I sat. I had had two classes from one professor, one class from another, and no classes from the third.

They complimented me on elements of my portfolio, such as the length of my bibliography. They asked me some questions that were easy to answer. I was able to explain to them my academic interest in Pioneer Day and other holidays (I had three books about Thanksgiving in my bibliography), and I told them how history was my worst subject in high school and college. But they also asked some questions for which I did not have a good answer. For example, in my US history syllabus, I devoted a lot of time to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, discussing labor unions, suffrage, preservation and conservation, immigration, and Native Americans. They asked me why I devoted so much time to one time. And honestly, I didn't really know why I felt a need to do that. I hadn't even considered that I had done so. For my discussion about monuments, they asked what was going on elsewhere in the nation. A lot of the questions were about the bigger context. And I simply didn't know what to say. I remember thinking, "Oof, this is not going well at all." One of the professors (the one I never had a class from) seemed to function as Simon Cowell on my committee—I felt as though she was deliberately asking me difficult questions. And the committee wasn't satisfied when I honestly told them "I don't know."

They sent me into the lobby while they deliberated. I was sitting there for about twenty minutes, which gave me plenty of time to think about my social awkwardness and my less-than-satisfactory answers. I thought it was unlikely that they would withhold my degree just because my defense wasn't going well, especially since I had devoted so much time to the portfolio (not to mention all my classes). But I did wonder why it was taking so long. I began to wonder what would happen if I didn't pass? Would I have to take classes again in the fall? I did have to remind myself that it is easier to point out the shortcomings of a book than it is to praise its strengths. (Two years of grad school, and ten years of editing, taught me that.) So while they had lots of questions where I could have done better, that didn't mean the whole thing was bad.

They invited me back in and told me that I passed. Phew! They told me my Pioneer Day project sounds interesting, and they encouraged me to look for bigger context. Noted. And the difficult professor even invited me to follow her to her office so she could give me a book about holidays—it was written by her friend (and even was personally autographed), but she was trying to get rid of books. And this book was already on my Amazon wish list. So that was very generous!

So after my defense, I went to the university store to buy a University of Utah t-shirt (I thought I should have one now that I had a degree from there). And I've kind of been in a low-key celebration mode since then, being pretty relaxed about eating treats and other things. 

It's so nice to be done. I feel a level of freedom I haven't felt in a while, since I no longer have assignments to worry about. And I have a satisfying feeling of closure about my schooling experience.