PhD defence on a broken laptop

In the 1990s, I was pursuing a master’s degree at a graduate school. I spent a lot of time in a graduate computer lab. Back then, personal computers were expensive.?The graduate computer lab was not only a place to do schoolwork but also to catchup with fellow graduate students. I made individual floppy disks for each of my courses to save my work. In those days, students losing their work due to a computer virus was not uncommon.

Now I use a laptop. For my PhD, I regularly worked on my dissertation. There was always a fear of losing my work due to my computer crashing. So, just to be safe, before I’d go to bed, I would email myself my most updated work. However, I was not prepared for what happened next.

I pretty much took my laptop everywhere I went. One night, a few days before my PhD public defense, I was working on my presentation on my laptop at my house. I decided to move my location, so I put the power cord in my pocket and held the laptop in the palm of my hands to go upstairs from the basement. I did not realize the cord was dangling from my pocket. I tripped over the cord. The laptop slipped from my hand and hit our wooden floor with a loud crash. My heart immediately sank. Many thoughts were racing through my mind. I bent down ?to pick up my broken laptop and I taped up all the broken pieces. ?I can no longer close my laptop or put it in my laptop bag. But to my surprise, my laptop still worked. I gave my final presentation on a broken laptop. I was so happy that my laptop did not give up on me!?