Success

Just after Thanksgiving Ronny and I flew back to Oregon for Ronny's dissertation defense and a short visit with friends. The morning of the defense I dropped Ronny off at the school while I headed over to a friends house and the store to prep the refreshments. The night before one of Ronny's professors emailed out to everyone that all should come to hear him and that his wife makes really good brownies and they should come just for that. (Nice, no pressure or anything!) My friend was great and had everything all ready for me and we chatted while they baked.

Ronny did great and many people attended, (more than we expected). The room quickly filled, I think only 2 seats were left open. One of the guys in his lab presented just before he Ronny did and only 2 people other than his committee came, he was kind enough to bring the coffee service over that wasn't used at his. I completely blanked on that as we don't drink coffee so everyone was happy.

After the presentation the audience was kicked out and his committee has a question and answer session with him. After that is complete Ronny is asked to leave while the committee deliberates and decides whether to pass him or not. Ronny said he was only out of the room for less than a minute. The committee said they passed him in world record time and asked him to sign his name on the completion page. Ronny then asked them for any revisions they had so that he could wrap up everything by the following afternoon. The next day was spent with Ronny frantically completing the few revisions he had (mostly typos and rearranging stuff) amongst meetings his lead professor had set up. At 3:30 I was sent to Kinko's to have the finally copy printed and then raced back. We then hunted everyone down that he needed signatures from and I raced over to the administration building to pay for an archiving fee and submit the final dissertation to the graduate office. I made it there at 4:47 (the office closed at 5). Ronny was in yet another meeting and met me at the bookstore just after 5 as we had dinner plans with friends and had to drive to Portland that night.

Ronny received an email shortly before Christmas that his degree was processed and he was complete as of Dec. 2, 2009. Welcome Dr. Ronald Vance Bjarnason Jr. PhD! It was a long journey but he has finally reached the finish line.