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.
7 comments:
Interesting posts EGF! It is all sooooooooo different from how I defended, weird. But I've heard so many different defense-styles from over the world that I'm not surprised anymore. In Germany it differs largely even between faculties, universities, cities, states, ...
It's different around the US too, but I think less different than compared to non-US PhDs. What's funny is how everybody thinks theirs is the "normal" way!
Thanks for sharing, EGF!
We have public defenses here, kind of like what you described in *. The Adviser(s) are not allowed to be on the committee though, at least at my university.
you're welcome. whether or not the adviser is there is interesting. That person knows your work best, of course, but is also a little biased. I can see the justification for both approaches.
another justification for not having the adviser on the committee is that sometimes the adviser is the person who least wants you to leave. so they can be biased against you. that's another reason they usually don't get a vote on whether you're ready to graduate- it's one of the few safety mechanisms for letting students GTFO.
can I just say, I have to wonder what part of the country you were in that the committee was so concerned about not letting students pass if their parents were there?! That is hilarious to me.
where I went to school, I think it was assumed that even students who failed would revise their thesis and eventually get the degree. And they enforced the pre-defense committee meeting for this reason: you weren't allowed to schedule your defense until they were SURE you would pass. and besides, even if you didn't pass, you could always just lie to your parents, right? (?) Most of the ones who didn't pass at my school were irresponsible liars, anyway, so I just assumed that was what they did.
Also, seems very inefficient not to do the formal presentation privately. I have to wonder if the 2 hours of questions would have been much shorter that way. I'm glad you blogged about this though. VERY interesting.
and making you do math like square roots?? WTF is that?? I couldn't do that in an interview setting, no way.
glad you used humor, though. Personally, I think it's good if you can joke when you're nervous.
I haven't encountered the situation of advisers holding students back to keep them in the lab, but I can see how it could happen. I think the culture of my field/institution tends to look down on faculty whose students take too long to finish. If nothing else, that might negatively impact the adviser's ability to attract new students.
The rule about the seminars came with a rule mandating annual committee meetings, which were not required in the past. So a student might not meet her committee between prelims and defense, which is how these problems can develop. I agree that regular meetings should prevent almost everybody from failing.
I liked the seminar separate from the defense. True, I didn't have that to take up some of the defense time, but it was so nice not to have to worry about preparing a talk before the defense, and even nicer to not have all that extra pressure during the talk. I gave the talk last week actually, and it was fun to share my research with my department knowing that I had already passed.
Actually I think it's more to protect from the negative bias MsPhD mentioned. Over here, committees with yearly meetings are only being introduced now, so until recently students were completely at the mercy of their supervisor.
Also, I can totally see how you enjoyed giving the seminar knowing you had already passed :)
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