Dot Dot Dot

Defense of the Masters

Yup. That's right. I defended my masters this last Friday from 2:30-4:30 PM. Why am I writing about it today and not on Friday. I've just been *that* busy.

I was pretty nervous about my masters defense all the way up until I started talking. The room was packed--literally. All the seats were filled and some chairs had to be borrowed from the room next door. I estimate there were 25-30 people there. A couple of people were teasing me about bribing grad students to come to the defense by offering free food. (Of course, everyone has food at their defense. It's just one of the things you do.)

On the matter of food, I had donuts, bananas, orange juice and apple juice--a kind of afternoon breakfast. In better words, you could call it "second breakfast." Breakfast is one of my favorite occasions for eating and my defense being my shindig, I had to have breakfast food.

My committee was made of: Ronald Metoyer (my adviser), Margaret Burnett, Rajeev Pandey, and Jimmy Yang (Grad Council Rep, professor in the School of Business.) I'm very thankful for their feedback and willingness to be on my committee.

The defense was structured like so: I presented my research (which I had written up in my masters), I fielded questions from the audience, the audience was kicked out, I answered questions from my committee about my thesis (and presentation), and then I was grilled on anything the committee members wanted to ask that was relevant to my coursework. After all that, I was kicked out while my committee came to a pass/fail decision. Happily, I passed.

I really enjoyed the challenge of presenting my research. I found the Q/A session with my committee challenging and exhilarating. It was satisfying to realize how much I have learned in grad school.

I was relieved to find out my committee really liked my thesis. I received several fine compliments about it. After reading my committee's comments, it looks like I don't have to much editing to do before I can turn the final version. Mostly I feel like I have accomplished something and very relieved that it went well.

Posted by enigma at June 6, 2006 10:50 PM