Successful PhD Defense... post a coin that makes you feel...

[lkenefic]

...like you really accomplished something after you got it. Here's the last coin I got to complete my Lincoln Date/MM set:

 

 

[robec1347]

Congratulations on completing your set. That is a huge accomplishment. (thumbs u

[rrantique]

Congratulations on completing your set. That is a huge accomplishment. (thumbs u

 

Congrats Lou.

[TomB]

There is no coin that can compare to the relief and exhileration of a successful PhD defense. Here is a coin that always gives me a rush when I view it, but it cannot hold a candle next to the rush I experienced upon my own successful defense. Congratulations.

[SkyMan]

CONGRATULATIONS on a MAJOR accomplishment!!! Now, go get a job.

 

So, dare I ask? What is the title of your thesis paper? (Mine was, "An Analysis of the Effects of Ground Parameters and Multitemporal Compositing Techniques on the Passive Microwave Vegetation Index").

 

This isn't a coin, BUT I'd say it's not too bad of an accomplishment... (take a look at the date stamp).

 

 

Good luck with all your future endeavours!!!

[physics-fan3.14]

Major congrats on the PhD defense. That's a huge accomplishment, and something to be very proud of. I haven't quite gotten there yet (heck, I'm just now looking at grad schools), but I know how good I felt when I walked for my bachelors.

[jtryka]

That is one cool FDC! Congrats on the PhD!

[lkenefic]

SkyMan... my dissertation title is: "Genetic Diversity of Bacillus anthracis in North America". My department (and my dissertation chair) works a bit differently than most... we're supposed to shoot for three publications from our PhD work. I just had my third first author pub come out in the Sept 2008 edition of Emerging Infectious Diseases but my major finding is still to be accepted. It's still under review at PLoS Biology, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Additionally, I'm trying to get my Introduction published either in Critical Reviews in Micro or in FEMS Micro Rev... I'm figuring I didn't spend nearly four months of my life writing this thing just to have it languish on a shelf!

 

Thanks for the kind words...and I'm looking forward to sp[ending more time with my coins...

[Oldtrader3]

Good luck with having you thesis articles published. They surely throw up the hoops to jump through. My oldest daughter just finished her PhD in Antropology (2) years ago and I remember the hoops that they jumped her through.

[BillJones]

Actually it was two coins that completed a set for me. I've been a type collector since the mid 1960s. As I acquired type coins over time, I found that I was getting more and more pieces with the date 1795. Finally completing a 1795 year set seemed to be reasaonable project. It came down to two coins, the half cent and the $10 gold piece. Both are "common dates" within their series and therefore logical pieces for type coins. BUT as type coins go they are "key coins" with respect to rarity and price.

 

Believe it or not finding a high grade example of the half cent that can be graded and put into an NGC or PCGS slab is harder than finding the same type of situation for the big gold coin IMO. At least it was harder for me. I couldn't find anything in a high grade Liberty Cap half cent at the 2007 EAC convention. I did find the right coin at this years' EAC show however. I went to the show knowing that gold piece was available, but the half cent was the end of show find. It was raw had be sent out for grading. Here are the coins:

 

1795 half cent, C-1, lettered edge, heavy planchet

 

 

1795 $10 gold piece BD-1, R-3+ It is believed that this coin was made from the first die pair used to strike the $10 gold denomination.

 

 

 

[leeg]

Congrat's on these major achievements!!!!!!!!

 

Bought this one raw and now graded MS64:

 

 

[TomB]

Once you two wrote your thesis titles down you made me curious as to what my title was. Obviously, I don't look at it very often since I can't remember the title. Mine was "Regulation of CD18 by Retinoic Acid: A Novel Mechanism of Transcriptional Regulation in Myeloid Cells".

[Dcoin]

Congrats Lou!

 

I'm defending in the fall and am really looking forward to getting through. Thanks for sharing the good news!

[lkenefic]

Once you two wrote your thesis titles down you made me curious as to what my title was. Obviously, I don't look at it very often since I can't remember the title. Mine was "Regulation of CD18 by Retinoic Acid: A Novel Mechanism of Transcriptional Regulation in Myeloid Cells".

 

Now THAT sounds like a cool project! The one thing that really left me sort of empty in my PhD work was the functional aspects of the genetic polymorphisms I discovered. Yes it's cool to be able to link single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to phylogenetics and tie this into the ecology and evolution of the disease or to be able to apply this to molecular epidemiology for disease tracking... but figuring out whether or not these SNPs (or other genetic variation) are linked to pathogenicity or a more attractive vaccine target is much more the holy grail.

 

Cheers... Leo

[lkenefic]

Congrats Lou!

 

I'm defending in the fall and am really looking forward to getting through. Thanks for sharing the good news!

 

Congrats... you're down the home stretch.

 

...but I'm bummed that they still haven't shown me the secret handshake or given me my secret decoder ring yet...

[TomB]

Hang in there, Dcoin! Remember, if you are properly prepared for the defense, you will know more about the topic than anyone else present. (thumbs u

[SkyMan]

Hang in there, Dcoin! Remember, if you are properly prepared for the defense, you will know more about the topic than anyone else present. (thumbs u

 

...but that of course will mean that your Committee will Zing you with some peripheral questions that THEY know more about just to make you sweat... be it Background Theory, Process, Statistics, Whatever...

[lkenefic]

Dc... exactly what Tom said. Additionally... and I've heard this from many others.. your dissertation advisor won't let you defend until he/she knows you'll do well. Since you're scheduled to defend later this fall, I'm certain you'll do well.

[TomB]

Sy and Lou make excellent points in that your thesis adviser and you committee would be embarrassed if you were woefully prepared, which is a powerful motivational tool to make them certain that you will be fully prepared. However, if you have some sort of Richard Cranium in the audience during the public defense or if you have one as your outside reader in your private defense then there might be a trap question waiting for you. Overall, they want you to graduate.

[SkyMan]

...Overall, they want you to graduate.

 

Yup!

[Dcoin]

Thanks guys... its the stats part that's got my underwear in a bunch. I know there is going to be a question that I did not prepare for. From experience its how you answer it that sets the tone for the defense. Answered right and you prooved yourself. answer wrong and its blood in the water.

 

Has this been your experience too?

 

[SkyMan]

Thanks guys... its the stats part that's got my underwear in a bunch. I know there is going to be a question that I did not prepare for. From experience its how you answer it that sets the tone for the defense. Answered right and you prooved yourself. answer wrong and its blood in the water.

 

Has this been your experience too?

 

Dave, this is your defense you're talking about, right?... NOT your Orals? I'm rather surprised that you weren't properly Crucified about Stats at your Orals. In my case the Orals was where the Committee members were like sharks in the water. That was the point where they wanted to find out my weaknesses (for me, Atmospheric Optics and high end Statistics) so that they could recommend classwork to take prior to moving on to the Thesis work. DEFINITELY talk with your Chair as to what he/she thinks is important to work on before you get to your Defense. He/she wants you to succeed by this point in time.

 

If all else fails during your Defense, and you are Zapped with a question that is making you sweat, remember DO NOT BS the answer. Answer what you can answer, then REDIRECT your answer into areas that you do understand and spend most of your time there. Part of the process is just to learn to speak in front of a crowd in a confident manner.

[TomB]

Dcoin, I have never heard of anyone getting attacked during their private defense. If you have made it that far then the committee, the department and the university have a vested interest in you and they want to make certain everything is in order. Your committee members may ask you questions to determine the depth or breadth of your knowledge, but there are so many ways to answer a question correctly or to ask for clarification that it is unlikely you will enter a no-man's land.

[Dcoin]

Sky, my orals are in Oct. so I am fully ready for my trail by fire. Hopefully, it will solidify the understanding of my research. The blessing is that my research only has a simple pre/post test design with limited variables (Its an education PHD). I think there is very little to hide in my stats.

 

Ike- I'm sorry bro, I didn't mean through off your thread!

 

[TomB]

Now I'm confused. Are you taking your oral exam as part of your qualifier in October or are you defending your thesis in October?

[lkenefic]

Dcoin... not a prob... I'm really NOT that territorial

 

Seriously though... My orals were basically everything I could hope to comprehend about the genetics of infectious disease, and some stuff I could never hope to comprehend. Think about it... I'm in a room with 1- a PhD in Bioinformatics (with two PNAS pubs under his belt); 2- a PhD who teaches Infecious Disease and Medical Microbiology with around 20 pubs in Biofilms; 3- PhD from JHU who has testified to Congress about the emergence of drug resistant bacteria in the poultry industry; and 4- My dissertation advisor... endowed chair for the department, Director for TGens' Pathogen Genomics division, and (arguably) the worlds' authority about anthrax genomics. There's no way I'm going to know more than these people and Skyman's right... DON"T BS! My orals started off fairly well. They asked me some fairly straight-forward questions about molecular genetics in general and when I answered correctly, they just moved on. When I hedged, or seemed unclear in my response, they then asked more probative questions pertaining to that particular aspect,,, in my case, calculating mutation rates among populations of bacteria and relative mutation rates given loci that are more prone to mutations. About half-way through, I felt stupid... after three hours, I felt like a insufficiently_thoughtful_person... I'm glad they didn't ask me my name! However, they deliberated for only about ten minutes... and I passed unanimously. They did recommend that I "re-read" some papers and perhaps a chapter in "Genes" before my final defense. That was it... they did their job... If it was easy, everyone would get PhD's.

 

During my final defense, my task was fairly clear... they were going to ask questions just pertaining to my research. They still asked about mutation rates (they told me to study this), but it was framed with respect to my data and the papers I have. Also, since three of these papers have already undergone peer-review, I was fairly confident I could field any of their concerns. They asked me questions like: "if my data had been different [in this hypothetical respect] how would that have looked" or "in this paper you presented data supporting this argument, what would the data have looked like if it supported the other arguement"... and they had me draw on a dry-erase board "what it would have looked like. My final defense only lasted about an hour and a half and about 3/4 of the way through it had evolved into a discussion about infectious disease genomics in general. The last question I got was really just a thought question about biosafety and bio-terrorism in general... there was no right or wrong answer.

 

Your orals are in October? After going through all of the coursework and reading the pertinent papers... I'm sure you'll do fine, don't let up now, but don't freak yourself out either...

 

Cheers,

 

Leo

[Dcoin]

Now I'm confused. Are you taking your oral exam as part of your qualifier in October or are you defending your thesis in October?

 

The way it works for an Education PHD defense is that you have something called an oral before you defend in front of your committee. The oral is classmates, professors and other invitees. After your presentation they have the right to ask any question regarding your research. Only AFTER this, does your formal defense takes place.

 

I’m curious, do the other PHD’s have a similar format?

 

[TomB]

Dcoin, your answer now makes much more sense to me. My PhD is in molecular and cellular biology and biochemistry, which is not exactly the same field as yours.

 

The paradigm for where I went to school (Columbia and Brown) is that you take a two-part qualifier sometime from your second through your fourth year in grad school. The first part is typically termed the written exam and consists of a short oral presentation to the members of your committee, who then have a week or two to each compile a list of papers for you to read. You are then given a month to read these papers and then the committee gives you a list of questions for you to answer and you are given a week to answer those questions. Once passed, you continue to work on your research until such time that your mentor and committee suggest that you take the oral exam. The oral exam consists of the preparation of a 15-20 page grant proposal using your thesis project as the basis. The committee has two weeks or so to read the grant proposal and then you prepare a short (5-15 minutes) oral presentation for the committee regarding the grant proposal. The committee then dives into this grant proposal and asks questions for perhaps 3-6 hours. After successfully completing both halves of the qualifier exam, a grad student is considered matriculated and a candidate for the degree of PhD.

 

Some time later, from 1-4 years, the thesis work will be finished and again the grad student meets with the committee to get the official approval to commence plans for a thesis defense. Two weeks prior to the date of the defense, the completed thesis is distributed to the members of the committee. The thesis defense consists of two parts. The first part is a public defense where you speak for perhaps an hour regarding your data and provide all information needed for those skilled in the art to understand the project. The members of the public may then ask questions at will until they are all finished. I had about one hundred folks show up for my public defense and this included most of the faculty and grad students as well as many hospital-based faculty. The second half of the thesis defense is the private defense where you meet with the members of your committee plus your outside reader and each of these folks has the opportunity to ask questions until they are satisfied that you are competent for the degree. I don't know that this took any less than two hours when I was in grad school and some folks were in there for six hours before they were allowed to graduate.

 

I expect that some folks went through a similar system to my experience, but not everyone.

[MikeKing]

interesting post how things are done in different ways at different places. I took my Ph.D. at a Medical school, so I don't know if that made much of a difference. My first oral exam occured when I finished my course work and had a Ph.D. proposal. It was entirely private, and made up only of me and faculty members. It was also hell. Horrible Horrible Horrible, mean, evil, attempted castration kind of thing.

 

After passing that, and you had to pass it to move on, I became a Doctoral candidate. This was an official title. After that, it was just continuing my research till the dissertation was finished and then, the Doctoral Defense. I had to have a couple of scientists from outside the institution for this (we had to find them ourselves and get them to agree to it) along with the usual hardcore muscle freaks...ummm...faculty. The Defense was a cinch, since I was the only one who really knew what I was talking about at that point . Getting a Ph.D. is entirely different than getting an M.D. I suggest that anyone going for a Ph.D. immediately start a 4-7 year Psychoanalysis, because it's probably the only time in your life that you have the luxury of having a nervous breakdown and still manage to function holed up in some lab or library.

 

edited to add:

 

there's a movie, I forget the name, 1960's or early 70's where Donald Sutherland was a grad student, I think defending his thesis or something like that, and he went totally crazy while doing such...I forget if he started throwing his papers at the faculty members or standing up on the table and screaming at them...something like that. I'd like to see that movie again because now I can fully understand it.

 

A fellow grad student of mine actually had a psychotic break during his defense, and they had to take him away. He never came back. Apparently he jumped up on the table and claimed he had a cure for cancer. Conspiracy theorists would have a field day with that one.

 

I myself was totally nuts by the time my Defense came up, since my oral's were never to be forgotten. It took only a few minutes into my Defense to realize that I was a 'made man' and it was going to be a cordial afternoon with champagne afterwards.

 

This is stirring up memories I've repressed for many years...I think I need to lie down...

[TomB]

interesting post how things are done in different ways at different places. I took my Ph.D. at a Medical school, so I don't know if that made much of a difference. My first oral exam occured when I finished my course work and had a Ph.D. proposal. It was entirely private, and made up only of me and faculty members. It was also hell. Horrible Horrible Horrible, mean, evil, attempted castration kind of thing.

 

After passing that, and you had to pass it to move on, I became a Doctoral candidate. This was an official title. After that, it was just continuing my research till the dissertation was finished and then, the Doctoral Defense. I had to have a couple of scientists from outside the institution for this (we had to find them ourselves and get them to agree to it) along with the usual hardcore muscle freaks...ummm...faculty. The Defense was a cinch, since I was the only one who really knew what I was talking about at that point . Getting a Ph.D. is entirely different than getting an M.D. I suggest that anyone going for a Ph.D. immediately start a 4-7 year Psychoanalysis, because it's probably the only time in your life that you have the luxury of having a nervous breakdown and still manage to function holed up in some lab or library.

 

edited to add:

 

there's a movie, I forget the name, 1960's or early 70's where Donald Sutherland was a grad student, I think defending his thesis or something like that, and he went totally crazy while doing such...I forget if he started throwing his papers at the faculty members or standing up on the table and screaming at them...something like that. I'd like to see that movie again because now I can fully understand it.

 

A fellow grad student of mine actually had a psychotic break during his defense, and they had to take him away. He never came back. Apparently he jumped up on the table and claimed he had a cure for cancer. Conspiracy theorists would have a field day with that one.

 

I myself was totally nuts by the time my Defense came up, since my oral's were never to be forgotten. It took only a few minutes into my Defense to realize that I was a 'made man' and it was going to be a cordial afternoon with champagne afterwards.

 

This is stirring up memories I've repressed for many years...I think I need to lie down...

Don't scare him too much, Mike!