Enlighten me

I figure I'm going to be referring to my temporary-job-that-follows-a-Ph.D. fairly frequently in the coming months.  I tend to refer to such a job as a "post-doc", but I've noticed lots of people write "postdoc" and some write "post doc".  Please weigh in using the poll on the side bar, or leave a comment with your remarks.  Only vote once.  I will use whichever one gets the most votes after the poll closes.

Closure WIN!

I turned in my final thesis yesterday. All the tasks that I expected to be roadblocks -- obtaining forms, getting signatures, paying fees -- fell into place one by one. The grad college guy said he'd look over it early next week and then let me know if there are any formatting issues.

I'm so pleased to have this phase over, and to have it over before my post-doc starts. woot!

Closure FAIL

I thought I could deposit my thesis today. But I could not.

By the time I went home yesterday I had done all the revisions required based on the defense, checked over all the data, and did and most of the formatting. This morning I got a later start than I intended and then I had to stop to buy the fancy paper on my way to work. Buying the paper took a while, as I had to consult with two different associates to make sure I had the right stuff. When I got to work, I spent some time making the last of the formatting changes, and then decided I needed to read through the whole thing one last time to make sure I hadn't done anything weird during the revisions and formatting. Then I printed it. Then I did the copyright form. Then I did the Earned Doctorates form. Then I got it all sorted into the proper envelopes. Then it was almost 3 pm and I still had to get a money order for bound copies I want, drive to the university, pay the stupid get out of jail grad school fee, pick up the signed forms from my adviser, and hand it in at the graduate college office. Cutting it close.

I got on the highway without stopping at the bank for the money order, so I had to turn around and go back for it. Then I forgot exactly where the building with the cashiers' office is and lost some time circling it and finding a parking space. I thought that office closed at 5, but in fact it closes at 4 and I got there at 4:04. Fuck. And why the hell can't I pay this lame-ass fee online? So I went to my adviser's office to get the forms, thinking I'd at least be able to get the packets all ready. Nope, he wasn't there despite an email yesterday saying he'd be there all day. he was probably expecting me earlier than 4:15. Whatever.

I was inordinately disappointed that I couldn't just get it the fuck done. I even had a bit of a tanty in the car after I left the closed cashiers' office. I still have plenty of time before the deadline to graduate this semester, but I just wanted this phase of life to be over. I don't want it to drag on another day. And I really wanted to have it done and dusted before I start the post-doc.

But whatever. I'll suck it up, and go back tomorrow and try to take care of it.

The day did get significantly better after all that, however, since EGM made a positively outstanding chicken makhani. Yum!

Update

I have a post-doc staring Monday! Doing pretty much my dream research! With a great salary for which I'm smug to say I negotiated!

There's a bunch of stuff related to this that I'm just dying to blog about, but I haven't yet decided how to pseudonymize it. In fact, that has kept me from posting over the last few days despite a new meme (!) from Amanda. I'm sure I'll settle on a identity-hiding scheme soon so I can tell you something about what I'll be doing, or at least something about how I feel about it.

Memes

Have you noticed that there have been very few memes circulating in this corner of the blogosphere lately? When I started by blog in late 2007, it seemed memes were pretty common, but they've really trailed off over the past year or so.

People act like it's a big inconvenience to be tagged for a meme, but I kind of like it. However, that attitude made me reluctant to tag people. Still, I think memes are kind of fun sometimes, provide an easy topic for a post, and are a nice way to help new bloggers grow their audience. So if anyone gets a new meme, you are welcome to tag me.


I did see that Cuttlefish started a very cool new meme last week and I'm curious to see if it starts circulating widely. A worthy effort, but my guess is that it will be too difficult for many people to write something fast enough.

Defense Part III: Aftermath

One thing I learned about myself at my defense is that I absolutely cannot do any kind of math on the spot. At all.

There are many regressions in my thesis, and Dr. X was suspicious of some of my r^2 values. He asked, if the r^2 is 0.41, what is the r? Um, um, um, ...0.2? Embarrassing. He also asked me the difference between standard error and standard deviation. This is something I know, of course, and of course I mixed it up in my answer. To top it all off, Research Adviser noticed an error in some calculations she had me add at the last minute. There are two ways to make the calculations, both valid, but she thought that I had made the calculation one way and written that I did it the other way. So she asked me to describe the algebra for solving the equation the way I said I did it. It was like she asked me to give my answer in Russian. So, thinking it would help me, she asked me to solve the equation on the white board. I got all flustered and bumbled through it. I tried to diffuse my humiliation by joking that this was my fifth-grade nightmare. That got a laugh and got them to help me through it.

At several points when I felt things were getting unnecessarily serious, I joked around a little bit or said things that were a a little lighthearted. I'm not sure if that annoyed the committee or relaxed them, but it definitely relaxed me. I figured I've had lots of successful discussions with scientists at meetings or during visits, and I felt like I would do my best if I pretended that this was like any other conversation about my work.

Three hours and 15 minutes after it started, Academic Adviser asked if there were any more questions, and then asked me to leave the room. They deliberated for over 20 min(!) during which time I was in my office around the corner with EGM. According to Research Adviser, the deliberations weren't about whether I passed, but about what kind of revisions I should make. Academic Adviser finally came to get me and after we were back in the room told me that the decision to pass me was unanimous. As he shook my hand, I asked if there were any major revisions. He said there were just minor ones that we would discuss later. The others shook my hand, congratulated me, and then went off to pee. Neither Research Adviser nor I are hugging types, but when I went to shake her hand she said I needed a hug instead. Seriously people, I rarely cry , but I misted over when I hugged her. It was awesome.

After that, we joined my labmates for champagne. Then my two advisers and most of Academic Adviser's lab went to dinner at a decent restaurant nearby, which was a lot of fun.

The following Monday my (non-university) office was covered with mini Twix's and decorated with congratulatory paraphernalia. They even had a surprise pizza lunch for me, complete with brownies baked with Twix bits -- Awesome Technician's best stab at a Twix cake. It was terrific. It reinforced my conviction that I have some really wonderful colleagues and made me feel really special. Research Adviser gave me a copy of a high quality text book that is considered the bible of our field - a gift I highly value.

I met with Academic Adviser the next week to get the list of required revisions. Fortunately, they're pretty minor. Basically, he wanted me to ensure that all the numbers were correct but told me not to spend my time changing the text. Rather, he wants me to focus on preparing my chapters for publication, and to incorporate the committee's comments in the papers, not in the thesis.

Before the defense, I promised myself no regrets. Based on positive feedback from my committee before the defense, I was pretty sure I'd pass. Still, I knew I'd flub some questions or wish I had answered some differently, but I think that's par for the course. You can't beat down a barrage of questions for several hours without missing some. So I decided that as long as I passed without huge conditions, I'd allow myself to be happy with my performance and not beat myself up over any mistakes.

So, between the challenging questions at the defense, the champagne toast, the celebratory dinner, the surprise pizza lunch, and the relatively minor required revisions, I say my defense was pretty climactic. I'm grateful to everyone who had any part in it and I'm so glad it's behind me.

Defense Part II: The interrogation

This post is the second installment of the story of my defense...

Contrary to a new departmental policy that mandated we have annual committee meetings, I only met with my committee once between my candidacy exam and defense. Annual meetings seemed unnecessary since I basically did everything I said I would do in my thesis proposal, which they all approved at my candidacy exam. I called the one non-exam meeting when I wanted to make a major change to one of my chapters, which everyone agreed on after some discussion.

I distributed my thesis to my committee three weeks before my defense. I initially emailed a word file of the thesis, and I offered to provide printed copies as well. Four of them wanted printed copies, which I had spiral bound for $6 each at Kinko's. The binding was such a small thing to do (and what's the alternative, giving them a pile of loose pages?), but apparently was very impressive, as everyone commented on how professional this looked. Per Academic Adviser's advice, I asked each of the committee members if they had any questions about the thesis and offered to meet with them before the defense. Only one person took me up on it, but I think it helped clear out some sort of odd questions that would have derailed the defense a little bit. That was Adviser's intention, in fact, since he says he has seen defenses where one person misunderstood a basic concept and then got really defensive/aggressive during the defense to save face.

On the day of my defense, I wore what for me is dress-up clothes: nice-ish pants, a fitted turtleneck sweater, and low heels. Budget cuts meant that the department no longer provides refreshments for defenses, so I brought some drinks and snacks. I also prepared a 15 min PowerPoint presentation synthesizing the highlights of my thesis* (i.e. not going chapter by chapter).

Once everyone was there, Academic Adviser asked me to leave the room. During that time Academic Adviser apparently reviewed my academic history and they discussed how they would conduct the exam. After about 5-10 min, Academic Adviser invited me back into the room and I started my presentation. I think the point of the presentation is to break the ice and to give the student a chance to start with something she's prepared rather than having to answer a difficult question right off the bat. I felt fine delivering the talk, but later both advisers commented that I sounded nervous.

After that, I sat down (the format of my candidacy exam had been pretty similar in that I started with a short PP presentation, but I didn't find a graceful point to sit down after it, so I regrettably stood for the entire 3 hour interrogation). Academic Adviser announced that they had decided to start by asking general questions and then shift focus to more specific questions. Dr. X started and asked a bunch of questions over a period of about 30 min. Others interjected, especially Research Adviser when she could see that I was being asked something I knew but for whatever reason wasn't understanding the question. They spent about 1 h 45 min going around the table that way once.

The second round involved very specific questions, like "Table IX on page 64 shows values above 10 in column 3, but values below 10 in column 4. Do you think that's ecologically significant?" or "the phrasing of the last sentence in the first paragraph on page 98 is logically flawed" or even some critiques that basically came down to style. At one point, I had to meekly point out that the chapter being scrutinized was published, so did they think I needed to make editorial changes for the dissertation? It was a tad awkward, but they agreed that it probably didn't matter.

The most general question I got was something like, "if I were writing a book about [your topic in a broad sense] and I asked you to write a chapter on [your specialty] what would you include as the most important points?" RA's questions were the most difficult because I thought I knew the sorts of things she would ask, but then when she formulated questions, I got all confused: does she want me to talk about topic X, or is she looking for a discussion of topic Y? There is so much history between us that each question seemed impossibly loaded. Academic Adviser didn't ask any questions at all except as follow-up to questions posed by others. These were mostly to shift the direction of the discussion to something that would help me make a good point, or away from something he didn't want to spend time on.

Tomorrow: stuff I struggled with and the aftermath.

*Defending students used to give a45-min seminar to the whole department then retire to a closed room with the committee for the defense. I guess there were some uncomfortable situations where an unprepared student had their friends and family at the seminar, then performed poorly at the defense but the committee felt pressured into issuing a pass because the family was present, with precipitated a change in policy. Now we have the closed defense and give a public seminar a couple weeks later.

Defense Part I: Forming the committee

I like people's posts about their birth stories because they demystify the labor and delivery process a little bit. In that vein, I thought I'd share my defense story since I think I have some readers who have to live through their own defenses soon enough. It might help them to hear how it went for someone else, although the particulars of any defense are unique to each student. Also, my impression is that a US defense is equivalent to a non-US viva (I'm basing this largely on JaneB's description of a viva in the UK system and EcogeoMan's knowledge of how they do it in Far Off Land), with the primary difference being how the committee of examiners is selected. So I'll start with that.

I established my committee about halfway through my third year, a few months before my candidacy exam. In my program (in most US programs?), the student personally asks each person to serve on her committee. I needed five people, three of whom had to be from the university, and one of whom had to be outside.

At my university (or maybe just in my department), the adviser is always the committee chair. Of course then I would also have Research Adviser on the committee, and while technically she counted as outside the university, she didn't really meet that criterion in spirit. So, I needed two more faculty from my university and I wanted someone truly outside of it, someone who had no personal interest in my project. At the time there weren't many faculty in my department with relevant interests due to recent retirements and sabbaticals, so I asked someone who is rather popular and whose interests only sort of overlapped with mine. He turned me down - in the nicest possible way - by saying that he was really too busy but if I couldn't find anyone else he would do it.

I regrouped, and then asked someone whose interests coincided with mine but only in a rather superficial way. This person has an aggressive personality that can be somewhat toxic in the wrong circumstances, but s/he also comes with a totally different point of view that I knew would force me to look at my work from a new perspective. Although annoying, that trait can actually be quite positive. We'll call this person Dr. X.

I still needed one more in-house faculty, so I asked someone from another department. I'd had a class with this person, and although s/he had a very different specialty from mine, s/he was the closest I could get to a person with any expertise in my field. S/he is also quite friendly with Academic Adviser, so it was a good match personality-wise. We'll call this one Dr. Other Department.

That left me looking for my outside person. The two students in the lab who had prelimed before me had both had relatively famous, out-of-town people serve as their outside committee members, so I felt like that was the standard. Looking back, there were some local people I could have asked but either I didn't know much about them at the time or I thought they weren't a close enough match scientifically; given the poor matches I had with the two other committee members, I really wanted to find someone with relevant expertise. For whatever reason, we (Academic Adviser, Research Adviser, and I) also eliminated potential scientists in a driveable radius. Instead, we settled on someone from way out of state who we respect greatly, does just what we do but different, and had an ongoing collaboration with us. S/he had a student visit our lab for a semester a few years before, and Research Advisor had been on that student's committee and traveled to Far Away State for that student's defense. Thus we felt like my request wasn't too outlandish. Happily, the person agreed and I had a complete committee. Let's call this person Dr. Out-of-state. The logistics were made simpler because s/he had a child who was starting college at a university in my town, so s/he was planning to be in my area around the time I wanted to do my exam anyway. It all seemed to be falling into place. Unfortunately, it turned out that Academic Adviser had travel planned for the dates Dr. Out-of-state was going to be in town, so I ended up having a one-on-one exam with Dr. Out-of-state and then a second exam with the rest of the committee. Luckily, they all agreed I passed without conditions, so the two-phase exam turned out to be fine.

This is getting long already, so I'll give you a play-by-play of my defense tomorrow.

wowed

We saw Avatar this weekend and it pretty much met my expectations. I agreed with most of the reviews I've seen -- the story was hackneyed but the movie was visually stunning. Really worth seeing in the cinema.

I might have mentioned this before, but one of Ecogeoman's favorite things in the world is going to the movies. I could take it or leave it. Like many people, he tends to prefer action movies based on the argument that those really need to be seen on the big screen, whereas dramas are just as good on dvd. Unfortunately, I hate movies that have significant time devoted to chase scenes (too stressful!). Which means that I often dislike the movies we see.

I really wanted to see Avatar in the theater, however, because I was curious about the 3-D. I remember when 3-D movies were popular for a short time when I was a kid, but they used those crappy red-blue glasses that distorted everything. The modern 3-D is amazing. It was seamless; most of the time it simply enhanced the visual impact of the movie rather than being an intrusive, noticeable special effect. There were a few points when I became aware of the 3-D but it was really cool. I'm glad we saw this movie in the cinema despite the $14 ticket price (!) because I don't think it would have anywhere near as much impact on a tv.

Catching up

Only 134 blog posts left to read (79 of which are Lockwood's), down from, like, 600 when I returned from vacation a week ago. Although I missed lots of interesting posts on which I would typically leave a comment, I'm resisting the urge to comment on most of them in order to get through the backlog a little quicker.

Also, I'd like to start posting here a little more frequently and regularly now that the intense period of dissertation writing and defending is over. But I'm not making that a NYR. :)

Resolutions

A belated happy New Year to my vast audience! I hope the new year is treating you well. So far I'm off to a pretty good start, having taken a relaxing vacation in a warm location, won a small award for a poster I gave a conference last year, and just about nailed down a post doc that should start pretty soon. More on all of that later. For now, I give you my (overdue) New Year's Resolutions.

1. You might recall that last year I resolved to post birthday cards to all 28 members of my family. I did reasonably well, but I was late for most of them. This year, I will get them sent on time.

2. I will open and file the mail the day that it arrives. I hate dealing with the mail. We don't get all that much of it, so I usually let it pile up for a few weeks and then go through a bunch of it at once. Unfortunately, that practice leads to unsightly piles and important items getting misplaced, so this year I'm going to change my mail-procrastination habit.

3. I will do 15 minutes of housework every day except Friday. Because really, if you keep up with it just a little at a time, it's really not such a bitch.

Notice that there are no work-related resolutions? That's because I don't have a clear enough vision of how my job is going to play out to formulate how I want to structure my work life. So many things are going to change, but plenty will stay the same, including my personality and temperament. I have some ideas of how I want my post grad school life to go, which I think I will discuss at length in future posts. Stay tuned!