That's Dr. Epicycles to you!
So....I got my PhD!
My doctoral defense was yesterday. It was incredibly stressful right up until it started, then it was fine. (I think the beginning really put me at ease...you can tell things will go well when your thesis committee starts off by arguing over which of the Avengers they would be. XD)
So the last few weeks have been...stressful. I got the dates mixed up about when my thesis had to be done, so I didn't get started in time -- I ended up with about 3 weeks to write it! I managed to get a mostly-done draft to my committee in 3 weeks (a bloody miracle!), but unfortunately that meant that I had to get the complete version done in the time I had set aside to work on my defense.
Then that took longer than I thought, because of (a) procrastination and (b) my advisor saying "make this change, it'll be easy, it's an analytical equation" except it was NOT, it had to be solved numerically and took me a full day to do. I FINALLY got the last version of my thesis done on Sunday. So then the rest of Sunday and all of Monday were spent putting together the Powerpoint slides for my talk. (I was very lucky I could just cannibalize some previous talks.) I finished that at 1 am Monday night. I went home, got up, practiced once, then came to campus to do my defense. D:
Of course, my family was in town, plus we had to handle food, parking, coffee and donuts for the talk, so many details...the most stressful part was really all the stuff leading up to the talk.
But once we started wrangling people into the room for my talk it got a lot better. :D A lot of my friends came to support me, plus my family was there, plus my committee members are all very silly. It took about 15 minutes to collect them all, and I made a joke about waiting for them to assemble. My boss took it and ran with it, declaring them the Avengers and starting a discussion about who was who. (The other two immediately nominated my boss the Incredible Hulk, one declared himself Tony Stark, and the third was assigned Captain America by the other two.) Then nobody could figure out how to get my talk started, whether I needed an introduction or what, so the whole thing started with a lot of jokes and laughter. :D
My defense itself went really well. For the unfamiliar, the way a defense works is you present your thesis research to your committee and to the general public. Anyone can interrupt with questions (and my committee certainly did.) After the talk, which generally lasts an hour, there's a question session. Then the public is kicked out and my committee asks me questions behind closed doors for a while. Then I get kicked out and my committee decides whether I deserve my PhD.
The question sessions went well -- I didn't get anything too crazy, and I managed to give satisfactory answers to everything. (Plus more joking and laughter, which is always good.) My advisor and another committee member got excited about some idea they'd had to use my research, so they talked about that a lot rather than questioning me. :D (I was fully expecting that to happen, since it always happens when those two are on a committee together. XD). The public got kicked out, we talked a bit about improvements to my thesis and the potential new project, then I got kicked out. Then we waited for maybe 10 minutes and my advisor come out, shook my hand and said "Congratulations, Professor." (Which is hilariously inaccurate, since I'm a Doctor now not a professor.)
Got lots of handshakes and congratulations. Everyone liked my talk and understood it(!). Got called "Doctor Epicycles" a lot. Ate donuts. I didn't really feel too different -- it doesn't feel quite real. Seven years of blood, sweat and tears, but I still have to go back to work to write another paper, so I don't really feel properly finished. I don't know when I will, when it will sink in. Right now it's just like, "Okay, cool. Done with that, now I have to do all these other things I've been putting off while I finished my thesis."
Like right now, I'm at the campus computer lab making the changes my committee suggested for my thesis. I have to get the finished draft done tomorrow, so I can submit on Friday and go to my ship on Saturday! So busy.
Anyway, that's why I've been so absent online lately! But now begins my great phase of unemployment, so I am planning to get a lot of creative things done (including fic!) plus spend some time sailing, so hopefully I have a more relaxed few months ahead of me. :)
My doctoral defense was yesterday. It was incredibly stressful right up until it started, then it was fine. (I think the beginning really put me at ease...you can tell things will go well when your thesis committee starts off by arguing over which of the Avengers they would be. XD)
So the last few weeks have been...stressful. I got the dates mixed up about when my thesis had to be done, so I didn't get started in time -- I ended up with about 3 weeks to write it! I managed to get a mostly-done draft to my committee in 3 weeks (a bloody miracle!), but unfortunately that meant that I had to get the complete version done in the time I had set aside to work on my defense.
Then that took longer than I thought, because of (a) procrastination and (b) my advisor saying "make this change, it'll be easy, it's an analytical equation" except it was NOT, it had to be solved numerically and took me a full day to do. I FINALLY got the last version of my thesis done on Sunday. So then the rest of Sunday and all of Monday were spent putting together the Powerpoint slides for my talk. (I was very lucky I could just cannibalize some previous talks.) I finished that at 1 am Monday night. I went home, got up, practiced once, then came to campus to do my defense. D:
Of course, my family was in town, plus we had to handle food, parking, coffee and donuts for the talk, so many details...the most stressful part was really all the stuff leading up to the talk.
But once we started wrangling people into the room for my talk it got a lot better. :D A lot of my friends came to support me, plus my family was there, plus my committee members are all very silly. It took about 15 minutes to collect them all, and I made a joke about waiting for them to assemble. My boss took it and ran with it, declaring them the Avengers and starting a discussion about who was who. (The other two immediately nominated my boss the Incredible Hulk, one declared himself Tony Stark, and the third was assigned Captain America by the other two.) Then nobody could figure out how to get my talk started, whether I needed an introduction or what, so the whole thing started with a lot of jokes and laughter. :D
My defense itself went really well. For the unfamiliar, the way a defense works is you present your thesis research to your committee and to the general public. Anyone can interrupt with questions (and my committee certainly did.) After the talk, which generally lasts an hour, there's a question session. Then the public is kicked out and my committee asks me questions behind closed doors for a while. Then I get kicked out and my committee decides whether I deserve my PhD.
The question sessions went well -- I didn't get anything too crazy, and I managed to give satisfactory answers to everything. (Plus more joking and laughter, which is always good.) My advisor and another committee member got excited about some idea they'd had to use my research, so they talked about that a lot rather than questioning me. :D (I was fully expecting that to happen, since it always happens when those two are on a committee together. XD). The public got kicked out, we talked a bit about improvements to my thesis and the potential new project, then I got kicked out. Then we waited for maybe 10 minutes and my advisor come out, shook my hand and said "Congratulations, Professor." (Which is hilariously inaccurate, since I'm a Doctor now not a professor.)
Got lots of handshakes and congratulations. Everyone liked my talk and understood it(!). Got called "Doctor Epicycles" a lot. Ate donuts. I didn't really feel too different -- it doesn't feel quite real. Seven years of blood, sweat and tears, but I still have to go back to work to write another paper, so I don't really feel properly finished. I don't know when I will, when it will sink in. Right now it's just like, "Okay, cool. Done with that, now I have to do all these other things I've been putting off while I finished my thesis."
Like right now, I'm at the campus computer lab making the changes my committee suggested for my thesis. I have to get the finished draft done tomorrow, so I can submit on Friday and go to my ship on Saturday! So busy.
Anyway, that's why I've been so absent online lately! But now begins my great phase of unemployment, so I am planning to get a lot of creative things done (including fic!) plus spend some time sailing, so hopefully I have a more relaxed few months ahead of me. :)