D-E-F-E-N-S-E, gooooooo DEFENSE!

I realize this post is far shorter than the norm, and I apologize. I am just finding it too difficult to string words together. Trust me, I did you a favor by making this short.

I defend my dissertation tomorrow. I have to admit, it’s a little hard to concentrate on anything right now, let alone writing a blog. About all I can think is, what if they fail me? What if for the last 7 years everything I’ve worked for is deemed unworthy? What if I’m going to be stuck at ABD for the rest of my life?  And the worst, worst thing I can imagine, what if they think my work isn’t good.

Well these are the thoughts that have been running through my head for days. Leading up to this weekend, I’ve been fairly active: playing disc golf, biking, working, walking, and other activities that seem like a gift after a long winter. We put our house on the market, which meant lots of cleaning and such. But since diss. reality started kicking in, the only thing I want to do is game. I want to retreat into my world of gnomes and mages and dragons where the only time I fail is because of an algorithmic outcome or being outplayed, where I have as many lives and chances as I need to get it right. To pass. That sounds pretty damn wonderful right about now.

I think of the spirit of the dissertation defense, and I can’t help but see parallels of “defense” all over my world. We defend our work in the humanities. Professors and graduate students staunchly defend our tiny stipends and little media rooms and budget lines. We constantly need to justify our own existence, often through a crazy bureaucracy that considers us waste. In game studies it’s worse, though in some respects we do have a bit of leeway because of its connectedness with STEM. Still, many folks in the humanities see us as silly and not respectable, since clearly our cultural artifacts are 6 months old, not 600 years old. Nonsense! If it isn’t on a dead tree it isn’t art!

We defend and defend and defend. And then wonder why we are so worn out at the end of the day. Well I’m sick of defending. I love what I do and I think I’m doing some good in the world. So fuck it. I’m not going to defend anything… except my diss obviously. But I’m going to walk into that room knowing I did something good, and somehow I’ll convince myself that’s all that matters, regardless of the outcome.