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Today, Dr. Shoshanah Jacobs shares her experience of the PhD Defense. Dr. Jacobs is a professor of biology at Guelph University with research interests in seabird foraging ecology and biology education. Seated around the table was the cast of the comedy of errors that would become the chorus of years’ worth of restless night. Jester A hadn’t read my thesis; I could tell because the highlighting stopped abruptly at page 40. Jester B had sent his regrets and accepted the thesis as is but had been located, publically embarrassed, and brought against his will to my defense. Jester C, was a committee member who had been undermining my work for years and would continue to afterwards. “ I’ve got your back”, he said, putting on a sheep’s costume, after we realized that the Graduate School had forgotten to invite my supervisor to the defense. The Chair of the department and my external examiner were also there. I felt bad for them. They were kind, prepared, and looking forward to a positive di...

Today, I have the pleasure of inviting Marwa Hassan to talk about PhD defenses in Egypt. Marwa soon will be awarded the PhD from the University of Queensland, Australia. However, she is originally from Egypt and has a Master of Science from the American University in Cairo, Egypt. During her Master’s degree she learnt about the PhD system and defenses in her country and now feels that she needs to share it with everyone. She is passionate about microbiology, bacterial interactions, diagnostics, teaching and science communication. To reach to the stage of the PhD defense in a developing country like Egypt is quite challenging. It takes a lot of efforts to overcome the hurdles of the system for a countless number of years. When you reach this stage you would have invested a lot of money on your research and spent a lot of long nights working hard either on the PhD or taking an extra shift to compensate for the income. It is definitely advantageous for students attaining their degrees in...

Today, I have invited Dr. Victoria Abboud to share her experience of her PhD Defense. Dr. Abboud has enjoyed a seventeen-year career in post-secondary education, the first eleven of which were spent teaching in the college and university systems in Michigan, Ontario, Alberta, and briefly in Brazil. For five years, Victoria served as an administrator in colleges in Ontario and British Columbia, and she recently became a certified coach who supports graduate students through her organization, The Spirited Academic. In the classroom, in administrative roles, and now as the Manager of Programs in Talent Development at a social innovation hub (Toronto), Victoria has been devoted to thinking through the ways in which group dynamics can be used to innovate and support the overall operational, process, and pedagogical goals of diverse communities of learning. Her current role focuses on building and delivering programming that encourages innovation leadership, social engagement, and collectiv...

Vanessa Corcoran earned her Ph.D. in medieval history in 2017 at The Catholic University of America and wrote her dissertation, "The Voice of Mary: Later Medieval Representations of Marian Communication," under the direction of Dr. Katherine Jansen. Her research interests include the medieval cult of the Virgin Mary, the intersection of gender and popular religious practices, and the textual representations of medieval women's voices. Vanessa was the Assistant Director of Tutoring Services at The Catholic University of America. Currently, Vanessa is an Academic Counselor in the Office of the College Dean at Georgetown University. She's working on a forthcoming memoir of her experiences in graduate school, entitled "It's a Marathon, Not a Sprint: Lessons Learned on the Road to the Marathon and Ph.D." Follow her on Twitter @VRCinDC . My dissertation, "The Voice of Mary: Later Medieval Representations of Marian Communication," investigated the eme...

Today, I have invited Dr. Karin Bodewits to share her defense story. Karin Bodewits is a PhD graduate from the University of Edinburgh and is the author of the humorous but tragic campus novel ‘You Must Be Very Intelligent — The PhD Delusion’ (Springer Nature, 2017). She founded the career platform NaturalScience.Careers. She works as an author, speaker and seminar leader for a range of communication topics, and regularly writes short stories about the peculiarities of academic life. This post is adapted from You Must Be Very Intelligent - The PhD Delusion . I follow Prof. Gilton through the chemistry building on auto pilot. Is my PhD defence really finally happening?... I have postponed this exam as much as anyone can. Under my arm I carry a copy of my thesis, full of dubiously scribbled notes, while my legs move forward unprompted and my hands all but squelch with sweat. For two months I have revised. Felix, a lab friend, had explained me every bit of chemistry in my thesis right dow...

Today, Dr. Philip Shields shares his experience of the PhD defense. Dr. Shields is a scholar-practitioner in the field of Executive Leadership. He currently works as a manager for a General Electric Company and as an Adjunct Professor at two universities. His undergraduate degree was in Chemistry and he holds a Master's degree in Management with a focus in Integrated Logistics. His passions include faith, family, flying, friends, and bridging the gap between public and private organizations so that both may benefit through strategic alliances. May 16th is a day that I remember fondly and with pride, but like most highly anticipated events it was not quite what I expected. Three and 1/2 years of preparation and hundreds of hours of research/writing on my topic prepared me for the technical aspect of this day, but the psychological component of the day was a different story. Preparation quieted most of my fear of failure, but the prominent question in my mind that day was "...

Cindy Lee studied linguistics and microbial biology at UC Berkeley, where she researched genetic engineering in sorghum. She then did her PhD at The Ohio State University, where she researched DNA repair in the context of breast cancer, but she would have graduated much sooner if her dissertation focused on cake. Now, she works as a science writer and editor. You can find her Tweeting @geneandtonic and blogging at Genes and Tonic . The ball was in the red zone, and the crowd was chanting, "DE-FENSE! DE-FENSE!" Well, not quite. These are some ways my PhD defense differed from an American football game: There was no whistle for time outs: When I wasn't in the lab, I was supposed to be thinking about my research. If I procrastinated by baking cheesecake or watching sports, then I probably wasn't trying hard enough to be a Real Scientist (hello, imposter syndrome ). If I took a 20-minute nap, then I probably delayed my graduation by 20 years (there's always that fear...

Today, I have the pleasure of hosting Dr. Karra Shimabukuro to the "Defenses around the world" series. Dr. Karra Shimabukuro recently defended her dissertation from the University of New Mexico. Her research interests include how issues of class and nationalism function in literature and popular culture, and reflect the fears, anxieties, and desires of a specific historical and cultural moment. Her most recent work exposed the whole cloth creation of Elfego Baca as a New Mexican folk hero for Western Folklore, an examination of the folkloric forest’s impact in Twin Peaks for Cinema Journal: In Focus, Freddy Krueger’s folkloric roots as a bogeyman in Studies in Popular Culture, and the functional aesthetics in the Nightmare on Elm Street series in Style and Form in the Hollywood Slasher Film. I started my coursework at the University of New Mexico in August 2013. I comped in Middle English literature, early modern literature, and folklore and methodology in February 2015. I de...

Today, I have the pleasure of inviting Dr Carole Trueman to share the story of her PhD Defense, Dr. Trueman is a recent PhD graduate from Northern Ireland. She has started an educational consultancy business called Clarity Consultancy NI . Carole’s business offers bespoke training, accredited courses, and business / educational research and consultancy services. As well as this, Carole offers advice and support to students on their university assignments and career options. You can find her on Twitter and Facebook I never thought I would be able to say that I enjoyed my PhD defence (or viva as we call it in Northern Ireland). I had been told horror stories, from the viva that lasted six hours, to the student that was so nervous they couldn't say a word! Now, I know these were extreme cases but I didn't hear too many stories that were pleasant. I knew that I was going to have a hard time, my supervisors were openly honest that my thesis was not perfect . As my viva approached ...

Today, Kirsten Coupland is sharing her experiences of the PhD defense with us. Kirsten completed her Bachelor of Science with first class Honours at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. She then worked for a year as a research assistant under Dr. Carol Dobson-Stone at Neuroscience Research Australia investigating the role of copy number variations and miRNAs in frontotemporal dementia. She was fortunate enough to be offered a PhD position in the same lab under the co-supervision of Assoc. Prof. John Kwok to investigate the interaction between lifestyle and epigenetics in non-inherited forms of neurodegenerative disease. She is currently employed as a postdoctoral researcher at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden and am working with Assoc. Prof. Helena Karlström to develop diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for the identification and treatment of a familial form of vascular dementia. When she's not in the lab, she likes to get moving. Stockholm is a beautiful city to e...

Today, I've invited Dr. Monica Killen to share her story of her PhD defense. Monica graduated with a Ph.D. in Education with an emphasis in Culture and Curriculum Studies from Chapman University. Dr. Killen’s research interests include food justice advocacy, Latino/a community organizing and ethnic studies. A first-generation college graduate and the first in her family with a Ph.D. Dr. Killen’s most recent publication is titled “Why Ethnic Studies Matters” and appears in "White” Washing American Education: The New Culture Wars in Ethnic Studies (2016), Edited by Denise M. Sandoval, Anthony J. Ratcliff, Tracy Lachica Buenavista, and James R. Marin, published by Praeger. She currently lives in Southern California with her husband, son, and two dogs. The dissertation defense is the hallmark of any doctoral program. The defense symbolizes the end of a journey that began on the first day of class. However, I would argue that as a doctoral student, there is more than one defense t...

Today, I have the pleasure of hosting Dr. Arnoud van Vliet in the "Defenses around the world" series to share the point of view of the examiner. Arnoud is a senior lecturer in microbiology at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Surrey, UK. He obtained his PhD in 1995 from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, and has since then worked in the UK and the Netherlands. He has supervised or co-supervised >10 PhD students in the Netherlands and in the UK, and has been external examiner of PhD students in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden. He has also been Postgraduate Research Director for 3 years, overseeing PhD student recruitment, examination and other procedures. The background story Some traditions are transnational: once the PhD defense (viva) of a PhD student is near, those "in the know" start scaring the candidate with horror stories about viva lasting 6 hours, external examiners with OCD discussing every comma, col...

Today, I have invited Dr. Alexandra Voronina to explain us how a PhD defense in Russia takes place. Alexandra is 32 and lives in a small town near Saint-Petersburg. She has a PhD in sociology, which she defended in September 2009 at Saint-Petersburg State University. Nowadays she works as an assistant professor at Admiral Makarov State University of Maritime and Inland Shipping at the History, Sociology and Political Science Department. She has two little children. Officially, she is on parental leave now but she has a cash-in-hand job as a tutor helping schoolchildren prepare for their State Uniform Leaving Certificate Examinations. In her free time she is writing a monograph, which she recently submitted to a publisher, and teaching aids. Her plan for the near future is to begin writing her habilitation thesis. She also blogs about social anthropology. You can find her on Instagram. When I studied for a PhD there were three ways to get the PhD in Russia : a full-time postgraduate co...

Today, I am hosting Dr. Maureen Berg in the "Defenses around the World" series. Maureen is originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, and received a BS in Biology at the University of Dayton. Maureen recently graduated from UC Berkeley with a PhD in Integrative Biology, and is currently applying for and interviewing for non-academic research positions in the Bay Area. You can follow her on twitter @MaureenBug . The majority of PhD programs in the US require a written dissertation, as well as an oral defense. However, the various biology departments at Berkeley do not require a formal defense. Most do require some sort of “finishing talk,” which is essentially a seminar where you present your all of the work in your dissertation. For my department, we form our dissertation committee after passing our qualifying exams (taken at the end of year 2), and meet with that committee at least once per year until graduation. To submit your completed dissertation, all you need to do is have each ...

Today, I am inviting Dr. Susan Bartos to talk about her defense. Susan completed her BS degree at Moravian College, graduating with honors in Nursing. Upon graduation from Moravian, she enrolled in the BS to PhD program at the University of Connecticut. She completed the program and successfully defended her dissertation in 2016 entitled, "The Self-Care Practices of Women with Heart Failure: A Mixed Methods Study." She has experience practicing in acute, adult medical/surgical and remains a practicing critical care nurse. She has obtained her Critical Care Registered Nurse certification through the American Association of Critical Care Nurses. She sits on a hospital wide committee that strives to bring Nursing Research and Evidence Based Practices to the bedside. In 2014, she joined the Fairfield University faculty to spread her passion of nursing to a new generation of students. I sat in the classroom and listened as everyone introduced themselves. “I have 13 years of exper...