Although perhaps you shouldn’t.
That’s it. It’s over. I am done with graduate school. Short of a few minor revisions to my dissertation, the event which from now on will be referred to as My Big Fat Russian Defense is complete. Big and fat it was, tell you what (and I am not even talking about the ensuing celebration(s)). My entire family was in attendance: Mom, Dad, grandmother, aunt, uncle, complete with 8 year-old cousin. My people took up the back row during the defense. My advisor flew in from Arizona to give me away, so to speak, for which I will be eternally grateful. Friends from high school, grad school, and beyond were scattered throughout and somehow, the room was packed.
I was panicking, as I am wont to do on many occasions, and had been all morning and night prior. My body had decided that it no longer needed sleep and should instead toss and turn all night, pausing to nap only long enough to entertain bizarre and creepy anxiety dreams. The morning of the defense was fraught with last minute seminar practices and dashes to the department store for stockings. I had just enough time before the defense to worry myself into an ulcer. Please take my advice and schedule your defense for the first thing in the morning, if you can. There is nothing worse than not sleeping all night and having to wait until 3PM to get the show on the road. That hurt everywhere.
The seminar went off without major hitches. I was three clicks past nervous and the nervousness failed to fade after I began speaking, which for me is highly unusual. I was convinced that my voice was shaking in a completely un-doctorly manner the entire talk, but I have since been told it was perfectly steady. Good thing the freaking out was restricted to the inside of my own head. I did not break down in tears as many people do during their acknowledgments. I think I was too loopy and disconnected at that point for crying to be physically possible.
After I was finished speaking, I fielded a few really interesting questions from the audience, shook many hands and was hugged many many times. My examination committee then cleared the room and asked me to step out. The ground rules of the defense were set in my absence. [Oh how I wished for those extendable ears they have in Harry Potter. I was always dying to find out what they were saying about me before committee meetings. I think those closed conversations should be recorded and transcribed, unsealed like court records following graduation.]
I was then invited back into the room – the examiners had arranged themselves around a table to make themselves seem like less of a firing squad (they failed). They then went around the table asking me questions they had prepared having read my thesis. And you know what? They actually read it! all 230 pages of it. I was shocked. I honestly didn’t expect them to read the whole thing. But read it they did, picking up on minor details (apparently, discrete and discreet are not the same thing. Who knew?? Don’t answer that, Richard) and data fluctuations.
I can’t say that the exam really felt like it was a scientific discussion – it was much more controlled than that, with only one examiner engaging me at a time – but it also wasn’t a quizzing session. No one asked questions they already knew the answer to (I think that would have infuriated me. I don’t need to be treated like a peer, but I am not in elementary school). The questions ranged form the nitpicky to the global and occasionally terrifying. I answered most from actual knowledge, some from conjecture, and others prefaced with, “Well, in my own head, I think of it like this…” I only had to cry uncle (without actually crying, thankfully) on one question – I couldn’t remember how it was shown that heat shock factor (HSF) is activated by the denaturation of the heat shock protein (HSP) that sequesters it in the cytoplasm of unstressed cells (whew). In the grand scheme of things, and taking into account the hundreds upon hundreds of papers that I had read in the preceding month, I don’t think that’s so tragic
After about an hour into the exam I heard a quiet click going off inside of me – kind of like that sound the pump makes when your gas tank is full. I was done. My brain was stubbornly refusing to process any more information. Response times lagged, many more umms were inserted into my answers. Luckily, this occurred toward to end of the exam. I was asked to step out again, I suppose so that the committee could come to a decision regarding the outcome of my exam. I like to think this was perfunctory and mainly symbolic, but the fear of failure was still very real for me. I was asked to come back in after only about 3 minutes of sweating (eve more) and shaking in the hallway. Upon coming back into the room, I was greeted by smiling faces and a hand held out toward me with, “Congratulations, Dr. Kushnir!” I know that a lot of people would have shed a tear or a expelled a huge sigh of relief upon hearing those words, but all I could think of were my sweaty palms and how real PhDs don’t have sweaty palms and they will all soon find out I am not doctorly at all.
I would like to blame that particular reaction on the lack of sleep and overall nervous upheaval. I would also like to be able to say that it has all sunk in since then, that I am really done, and I really have received my PhD after 7 years of not always fun work, but I am not quite there yet. It’s not entirely real to me. I have yet to sleep a full night. My stomach is still positioned somewhere between my insides and my outsides at all times. My anxiety level is, however, slowly dropping. I don’t know if I will ever be referred to as Dr. Kushnir again, but maybe one day I will be able to look at my plaque without a wave of disbelief and squeak of panic.
Overall, I have to say that my defense was an overwhelmingly positive experience, one that I have no need to repeat ever again, big, fat and Russian as it may have been.
The plaque in the picture above was a present from my aunt and uncle. Once I make myself stop staring at it, I will find a place for it… perhaps mounted on a wall in a prominent spot in my house.
Well, many congratulations, Anna! What an ordeal, but well done to you.
By coincidence, my husband was examining a PhD at exactly the same time you were defending yours. In the UK, the process is far less formal and ceremonial, but nonetheless draining for all concerened I am sure. The thesis over here on this occasion was over 400 pages; I am sure your examiners appreciated the 230 page length of yours, and that the length made it more likely that they’d read it and sythesise interesting questions to ask you.
Anyway, congratulations, again! Hope you have a great celebration.
Yeaaaaaay!
Wooo! Well done!
Congratulations Dr. Kushnir! Well done!
Yes, I’ve seen that done (we have public exams in Finland) and it annoys me too. Half the time the poor student ends up having to second-guess the examiner.
You will now be subjected to a campaign to have you only called Dr. Kushnir on Nature Networks. I hope you don’t mind. :-)
Congratulations! Nice plaque too!
Heartiest congratulations to you, Dr Kushnir, on this major personal and professional milestone. I, too, remember it taking a few weeks after the defense to grasp the gravity of it all and stop feeling all revved up. It’s so great that you put such effort into describing the experience as it will be really fun for you to look back on it down the road.
Congratulations again, Anna (I mean, Dr Kushnir), and to everyone – family, friends, former and current profs – who helped you on your journey.
Congratulations Anna, (better say Dr Kushnir!!!).
Is this the end of “lab life”?
Maxine – Thank you so much! I thought my thesis was on the long side. I am glad to hear that it was probably closer to the middle. 400 pages! That sounds very intense.
Bora and Matt — Woooo indeed! I think only today, on the second day, is it starting to sink in that i am finished. Phew.
Bob – Campaign away :) I will be happy to have some lasting evidence of the last 7 years. Thank you so much!
Corie – Thank you! I appreciate everyone on NN very much. They have all been a huge support for me. The NN logo earned its spot as the last slide of my presentation. Not kidding.
Abel – Thank you thank you! I have so many people to thank. I have been writing thank you notes for a couple of days. So many people helped me along the way and they deserve all the congratulations… for putting up with me for 7 years!
Mehdi – Thank you! No no! I can’t end Lab Life. It has kept me sane(ish) for the last two years. I wasn’t able to blog as much while working on my dissertation and missed it rather acutely. I have gotten really used to the release, or spot to deposit all of my jumpy thoughts. The subject of the blog might shift over time. Then again, it might not too much. Don’t know yet. It’s all still ahead.
Congratulations!
I remember getting about half an hour of sleep before my defense (or viva, as it’s called in the UK). I thought I had a nice early start, but my external examiner’s train was 2 hours late due to snow (don’t schedue a viva in Scotland in January). I therefore spent about 2 extra minutes talking to my superviser and 118 extra minutes hiding in the toilets. I was so wiped out I fell asleep in the bar at about 11pm. My entire lab went out clubbing without me!
Congratulations here as well! It takes actually more than a good nights sleep for the whole thing to sink in. Wait.. no more exams? No more tests?
Still wake up sometimes after dreaming of having missed an important deadline for my thesis. Five years after handing it in.
Hope you enjoy a couple of days off, I’ll deposit a ‘get your next lunch free’ voucher at Kookoo’s ;)
Cath – That is a terrible story! Oh no! You didn’t even get to celebrate your own defense? I hope you made up for it the next night… and the night after that, and so on. I was perilously close to being in the same situation as you, also likely hiding in a toilet. I had two committee members flying in within two hours of the exam. If either one of them was delayed, as is so common with flights these days, I would have needed some sort of medical intervention to calm down. I think that’s another important lesson – schedule the defense early in the morning not only to get it over with, but to force the examiners to arrive the night prior! I hope that your stress didn’t complicate your defense! All is well that ends well, right?
Oliver – No more exams! Ever! This is crazy. You are right, it’s going to take more than one night and more than one bottle of wine for everything to settle in. I am going to spend a lot of time at KooKoo’s in the next week, I think. Have to get all my revisions done and submit a manuscript. Guess it’s not completely over after all!
Oh, I celebrated plenty between 6pm and 11pm. Which may or may not have contributed to my falling asleep in the bar. Either way, I slept for about 12 hours that night. Of course I’d stupidly booked my flight to Vancouver for 10 days after the viva, and had a mad scramble to make my corrections, get the thesis printed and bound, and get my work permit through in time. (It arrived by fax the day before I was due to fly). Things didn’t really sink in until I was on the first of three long flights with time to spare. A little bit of a freak out ensued – “oh my god, I’ve finished my PhD and left the country! How the hell did that happen?!”
But yes, all’s well that ends well!
Congratulations Dr. Kushnir! And thanks for the detailed account of the events. I’m looking forward to again see more from you in the blogosphere after that is over.
Well done, Anna! :)
Congratulations!! Oh, a public defense, I want that too. We have them behind closed doors, with no friends/family anywhere nearby. I’m jealous now.
Cath – Wow. That’s quite a whirlwind after your defense (why is it called viva, by the way?). No rest for the weary, eh? I am not going to touch my revisions until the end of this weekend. I can’t stand to look at them just yet.
Martin – I am so excited to be back to the blogosphere! I have a lot to catch up on. I have missed it, I really have.
Timo – Thank you! Long over due conclusion. As my adviser always says, “Onward and upward!” There are exciting things coming up.
Eva – Oh bummer! So you don’t really get much of a release following the exam? Some pomp and circumstance is good, I think. Especially in this case. Luckily, Harvard is very good at pomp and circumstance, among other things :) You will celebrate thoroughly afterward, I hope! You are very close to finishing, no? Good luck!! My fingers are crossed for it to all be over quickly for you.
Happy for you…
Graham
On the topic of defenses, not having gone through grad school in science, I’ve only ever been to one defense, my roommate’s five years ago at Harvard. One of her committee members, a Nobel Laureate, fell asleep shortly after she began talking and pretty well stayed asleep the whole time. No joke, he nearly fell out of his chair, that’s how asleep he was. I couldn’t believe it. Is that what a Nobel earns you? The privilege of falling asleep whereever and whenever?
My roommate didn’t seem to mind. “That’s ok,” she said. “He’s old.”
Well done Anna.
(My inner Editor has the day off in celebration ;) )
Congratulations, Dr. Kushnir. I appreciate the detailed account of your final hours as a graduate student. Despite all the sleeplessness, anxiety, and other problems that you mention, it actually makes me even more excited to begin my time at Harvard.
Congratulations! Haha!
The next year I also will face my own defense. A long wait to it!
Graham – Thank you! It’s finally sinking in. I am happy too :)
Corie – That story would be much funnier if it wasn’t so close to the truth. Apparently, a Nobel also lets you say mean things about women and racial minorities. I hope he at least didn’t give her a hard time during the exam! That’s terrible.
Richard – Thank you! Looking through my dissertation now, I am starting to see way more egregious mistakes than the discrete issue. I must have been in quite a state while writing the thing.
Naveen – It wasn’t easy. None of it was easy, but I have to say that it was well worth it. I would do it all again. With just a couple of differences, perhaps!
Xi – Good luck! It does feel pretty fantastic to be finished.
Anna – many congratulations. Now the fun can start in earnest.
Well done and congratulations. This made me laugh:
After about an hour into the exam I heard a quiet click going off inside of me – kind of like that sound the pump makes when your gas tank is full. I was done. My brain was stubbornly refusing to process any more information. Response times lagged, many more umms were inserted into my answers.
I remember the same thing. I had a packed defense talk (a great feeling huh?), and then an hour or so of chat with my committee. There was this sudden urge I couldn’t quite put my finger on… and one of my committee members asked me if I had something I wanted to say…
“I really need to pee…”
was all I could manage. Thankfully they laughed and I was dismissed to deal with this pressing issue while they debated my future.
But that’s my epitaph as a Mr. moving to a Dr. In retrospect I wish it could have been something a bit more…symbolic…
Anna, I just noticed that as of today May 13, 2008, 13:25 Universal Time, you had not yet updated your status from PhD student.
Sorry, that would be 17:25 UT or GMT.
Sorry I’m so late on this, I’m in the process of writing my dissertation proposal. Anyways, my sincere congrats to you!
David – Very good point. I am still in the process of defining exactly what I am going to be for the next few months. Will be sure to let you know as soon as I figure it all out!
Nuruddeen – Best of luck! I hope that it goes smoothly and easily for you. Rip it off quickly, like a large and horrible band-aid.
Congratulations!! Sorry I am a bit late. I was away from the web (and therefore from the world) for several days.