The saga of my defense

So as you may know, I have been working as a tenure-track assistant professor for the past two and half years, while finishing up my PhD. When they hired me, I was supposed to complete my PhD by May 2017, and got an extension last year. The new deadline is May 2018. I submitted the thesis at the end of December, and the 5 evaluators (my supervisor, co-supervision, thesis committee president who is another professor in my department, and the two external evaluators) had 3 months to read the 350 page document and send back their reports. However, one of them is late. If I don’t defend before the end of the month, I need another extension, which has to be negotiated by my union. However, in order to negotiate, I need a thesis date. The department (of the university where I am doing the PhD, not the one I work at) has been very supportive, and they are sending out a Doodle with some dates, hoping that the last evaluation will be positive and that the thesis is ready to defend. Those dates start 10 days from now, and end mid-May, so within the next month and a half, I will defend my thesis, if all goes well. My first reaction was excitement, followed by wondering whether I should check the Dr. box next time I buy a plane ticket, followed by some fear, wondering if there will be major or minor corrections, wondering what to wear to the defense, feeling like all of a sudden it is all happening very fast…I suppose all this is normal. I’ll keep you posted!