Dr. English

My friend Jeri, who lives in Toronto, has been working on her dissertation for 7 years. I met her in September of 2002, here in Nice, with her husband Gordon. She was here to enjoy a year in France and continue working on her dissertation. In 2005, when they flew over for our wedding, Jeri was....working on her dissertation. Now, in the fall of 2007, she has successfully defended....her dissertation - which is something like this: "Prolouges written for litterature pieces by French women in the 500 years before Jesus Christ" - or something like that. And it was something like 7329 pages, written in French.
The amazing thing is that the specialist who was to "judge" her work, of course is some French professor, now living in England, who phoned in as a conference call on speakerphone during her 4 hour long defence, in front of a jury. Jeri claims the woman was on a beach as they kept hearing seagulls cawing out of the speakerphone. Only mildly distracting on the 2nd biggest day of your life. The first being of course her marriage to Gordon.
Also hilarious is the fact that every physical action in the room where her defence took place had to be verbally announced into the speakerphone for the benefit of said seagull-befriending-somewhere-on-the-coast-of-England-super-specialist-lady. So someone would bellow into the speakerphone "The candidate (that would be Jeri) is crossing the room. The candidate is sitting down behind the table. The candidate is picking her nose"
I just had to share this, because I think a little insight into the wild and wacky world of PhD people is, well, secretive, and wacky.
Here are photos of Jeri and Gordon, the before and after. Doesn't she look composed?
The best part is that her last name really is English. So now she is Dr. English, except she is teaching women's studies, in french, but no matter.
The 7 year itch paid off! Now if we can just get my friend down in Virginia to pony up likewise - right huffy?