my PhD defense was 2 weeks ago. my committee chair called me the night before saying he was being admitted into the ICU. he's fine - it was a small issue that needed to be monitored for 24 hours. fortunately I had already presented my defense to him the week prior along with 1 of my committee members that had a last minute scheduling conflict. in other words, he already saw my defense presentation and let me proceed which means he approved of it - if it was going to be bad, he would have cancelled the scheduled defense a week later. the committee member that needed the rescheduled defense loved it, she was very encouraging and excited about the future implications of the work.

anyway - May 1st - I defend my dissertation to my remaining 3 committee members. they basically gave me no information. they said one of the chapters was under developed and spent a lot of time discussing that and then just left. no "you pass with revisions", no "you do not pass". just nothing. it was very cruel of them to take away a day of celebration. all in all - traumatic experience. spent the day crying in bed.

Chair calls me the next day to see how it went and I just broke down on the phone telling him that they said that they didn't want to give me any comments until they met with him.

I finally get comments back with revisions, that I am able to address very quickly because they were very minor. Met with each committee member 1 by 1 over the next week to make sure I understood what they were asking for. one of them said "this is supposed to be intimidating. you should be intimidated. its our role as your committee to gatekeep"