u/Antique_Picture8767

▲ 4 r/PhD

So as the title says, I defend my PhD in 5 days. Everything is done, dissertation submitted, slides finalized, oral presentation polished. I do a full run through everyday and try to prepare for questions, but this only takes 2-3 hours each day. Most of the past week I haven't been in the lab much and, as a result, I am feeling so lazy and am afraid that people are going to think I am not doing any work (which I'm not). Is it normal to feel this way? I just submitted my fourth paper last week and I am waiting on the final touches from coauthors on my fifth 1st-author paper so I've been productive in my 3.5 years, but feel like I should be as stressed out about my defense as my peers are and I'm just not. Is there something else I should be working on? New experiments, reading, organization, etc.? I'm in Mechanical engineering and the United States.

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u/Antique_Picture8767 — 7 days ago