What Matters
I recently passed my dissertation defense. If I read the situation correctly, the defense is a formality that requires a certain level of professionalism and proficiency on the topic, but not a lot else. It is not a substitute for the dissertation. The dissertation has already been written and edited and edited and edited, and there have been numerous checks by supervising professors up to that point to make sure that the PhD candidate is not going too far astray in either argument, style, or approach. At the defense, the committee may react in several different ways. My sense is that their response depends at least as much on the professional trajectory of the candidate as on the relative genius of the candidate's work (that professional trajectory having previously been determined by the candidate's work and preferences, so it's not a clear-cut binary). The defense was the period at the end of a very long sentence. I wrote the sentence, and my committee made sure that...