following up on dr. geek's guestbook note that included this hilarious list of dissertation titles, i've decided to name mine:

Discourse Factors Affecting Blah Blah Blah: God I Am So Sick Of This

this Phrase: Phrase rubric for book/article/thesis names is common in my field too (as it apparently is in harriet's and dr. geek's, and it drives me crazy. SUM IT UP IN ONE DAMN CLAUSE ALREADY, PEOPLE!

frequently in my field, the phrase before the colon is semi-cutsy/funny, as in "the kinderg@rten path: online sentence processing in children" (a reference to a psy-ling play on a metaphor: being led down the garden path), or "the s@usage machine: a new 2-st@ge p@rsing m0del" (sausages being separate modules linked together in serial fashion, much like the model). as annoying as i find this particular titling scheme, it does have the benefit of allowing psy-linguists to refer to these papers as "the kinderg@rten path paper" or "the s@usage machine paper" rather than true$well et al. 1999 or fr@zier & F0d0r, 1978.

anyway, i'm pretty set against using a colon in my title, on principle. and i'm quite sure my title, when i finally think of it, will be extremely boring. at the moment, i can put off thinking about it because i'm working on my powerpoint presentation for my defense. the defense in my department is a public affair referred to as a "dissertation seminar," presumably to make it seem like hey, you're just giving a talk! no big deal! not a "defense" at all! no worries, mon! you're supposed to talk for 45-60 minutes, then the "public" (usually consisting of your labmates, one or two interested post-docs, and your out-of-their-element parents) gets to ask questions (usually there's just one, maybe two questions before everyone falls into uncomfortable silence), then your committee kicks the "public" out and gets to grill you for as long as they damn well please. this, of course, is the real defense. no one there to see you cry. finally, the committee kicks even you out and decides where they're going to go to dinner after they decide your fate, before coming out and giving you the good (we'll sign the form, but your advisor is in charge of making sure you make these "minor" changes we want) or bad (so, when are we all available for a second defense?) news.