Tomorrow at 2:45 Arizona time I present/defend my Master's research to basically the entire department (anthropology...all the 'sub-disciplines'...socio/cultural, physical and archaeology). They've changed things a bit in the program so now all grad students who are completing their MA in any given year present on the same day in one big "MA-athon," so *everybody*...all the faculty and many of the students...will be there (defenses used to have a much smaller audience and rarely had people from more than your own sub-disc).
I'm not as nervous as I could be...I've done several different (smaller) presentations of my research both on campus at brown-bags and on-campus grad student conferences and at 2 national meetings, so I've had lots of practice.
The only bad thing is, out of a bunch of students the whole day, I'm the Very. Last. One. here's to hoping they're ready to leave and *not* that, since there's nobody speaking after me, they can grill me for as long as they want
I am so ready to be done! At least I know my research portfolio (2 major papers) has been accepted by my committee, so the presentation's the last hurdle. That, and the two 25pg papers I have to write for the *classes* I'm taking this semester, that I haven't even started on yet!! (the MA took precedence).
After 4 years it will be really wierd to not have the thesis and other stuff hanging over my head.