I got the best email ever at 10:02 this morning: “The committee has unanimously approved the thesis and finds it worthy of being defended for the degree Philosophiae Doctor. Congratulations!” 🙂

I’m SO relieved and SO happy! I got quite a scare 2 days ago when I received the peer review from a journal for the 4th paper in my dissertation, but thankfully, the committee evaluating the entire dissertation was satisfied with my work. Phew! What a roller-coaster of feelings in just 2 days!

Until now, I hadn’t revealed the names of the members of the assessment committee for my dissertation, but now I can. 🙂

Jane Secker is Europe’s information literacy guru, and one of the most knowledgeable and enthusiastic (and fun) people in the field. Diane Schallert is an educational psychologist, and was one of Tove’s mentors when she did her PhD. I’m so honored to have these two as my opponents, and I look forward to our discussions on Nov. 25th! I only wish that they could be here in person! Our university, however, has limited funds at the moment and can’t afford to bring them here. The leader of the committee, Espen Bjørkedal, is one of my wonderful colleagues at the Department of Psychology here at UiT, and will be the only committee member physically present.

I received 6 pages of comments from the committee. This will be helpful for me in preparing for the defense. They first summarized the findings of each of the 4 papers and the extended summary, and then commented on some areas that need addressing. For example: “Although the work is presented as a mixed methods project, the qualitative component is such a minor component that one might reject the use of the term mixed methods.” So this is a great clue for me – they’ll probably want to discuss this at the defense.

Positive comments include: (1) “The summary begins with a relatively brief foray into three literatures… with the first topic representing a particularly masterful depiction of the definitional, measurement, and theoretical issues involved in information literacy.” (2) “The project as a whole makes an important and innovative contribution to knowledge in the field…”

It’s now fairly certain that I’ll get my PhD, as almost no one makes such horrendous errors at the defense that they fail at this point. I’m so delighted and feel like all the hard work has paid off! Thank you so much again to my amazing supervisors for making this possible! Tove and I were online together when I opened the email this morning. 🙂 And Torstein has been so sweet today – every time he passes by my office he stops, with a huge smile on his face and laughter in his eyes, looking like the happiest and proudest person on the planet. 🙂 And Mariann has sent me the warmest congratulations. How lucky I am. 🙂