Dissertation prospectus defense coming up

We made it back from Iowa okay, but I have my dissertation prospectus defense this Monday so I’m a little too swamped to do much blogging.  I hope to be posting regularly and responding to comments again early next week.

4 comments ↓

#1 jt on 04.22.07 at 9:53 pm

Though terrifying, I think the proposal defense has the potential to be *the* best grad school hurdle. Never again will you have 5 (it’s 5 at my institution) people you hand picked read your work and spend over an hour carefully discussing it with you. The actual defense (mine is on Wednesday) normally ends up being more of a formality than a forum for real discussion. I realized as soon as mine was over how interesting it had been and how much I had learned. I wished somebody had mentioned to me beforehand “hey - the proposal defense is great!” Hope yours goes swimmingly too.

#2 jgibbon on 04.25.07 at 10:09 pm

How did your defense go, JT!?!

Thanks for the well-wishes on mine. It went well, and was much like you described.

#3 jt on 05.02.07 at 9:27 pm

so glad to hear it went well!

my defense went smoothly - dare i say it was fun? almost. it was much more than a formality, and a real rite of passage in some ways. my committee members read my dissertation *very* carefully - i got feedback that is almost certain to save me a lot of headache with reviewers. they were also very congratulatory, which felt great…

#4 jgibbon on 05.02.07 at 11:27 pm

Congrats, Dr. JT! Way to go! I’m happy to hear it went well.

I attended my first ever defense today and it was similar to how you described yours. Lots of suggestions about how my friend’s dissertation could be turned into a book and a really collegial atmosphere. I can only hope mine goes as well. I’ll be sure to give an update in a couple years. :)

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