Hey Blue,

While I'm sure God is always looking out for you, I'm not sure you're going to need divine intervention.

Before I defended my dissertation I was a bundle of nerves, convinced that they were going to ask me all sorts of difficult questions that would have me crawling under the table, trying to get away before they confiscated and burned my earlier degrees.

It wasn't like that at all. They weren't out to trip me up. As things progressed, I realized that I knew way more about the topic than they did (big surprise as it had occupied my life 24/7 for years) and was even a little disappointed that they didn't ask anything hard enough to let me show off a little.

Having now spent sometime on the other side of the table, I can tell you that these things are often more pro forma than you might think. If your thesis supervisor supports your project, it's pretty rare for his/her peers to call that judgement into question.

Good Luck