Dr. Jonathon

The long awaited day finally came.

Jonathon officially earned his PhD and became Dr. Jonathon.

Thursday, August 5th was the day of Jonathon's dissertation defense. 22 family members from 4 states travelled to New York City to watch Jonathon present his talk. He spoke for about an hour about his various projects and the results and conclusions that he got during the past 5 years. I couldn't have been prouder. After the first 10 minutes, most of us didn't understand much of the information, but we knew that he was doing a fantastic job. He was calm, smooth, and thoroughly engaged in his presentation.
After the talk, Jonathon went into a conference room with his committee and they grilled him for an hour on everything they could think of related to his project. When we all arrived back at the reception to hear the results, we found out that he had passed with flying colors. He answered every single one of their questions, and they couldn't stump him. His committee only had to confer for 5 minutes to decide that he passed. He did so well, in fact, that he not only passed, but he was awarded "distinction" as well. That honor is only given to the top 10% of Columbia students. The day could not have gone better! What a wonderful experience it was to see 5 years of hard work culminate in such a positive and happy occasion.