Another Step Closer

This week, like most weeks this semester, was another quiet one, since I have no additional research projects to start or finish. I couldn't make it to the lab this week because of tornado warnings in the area, so instead I focused on finishing last edits to my dissertation. That's right, this week I sent in my fully completed dissertation for first looks. While the dissertation process is not uniform, getting and incorporating feedback, just like scientists do for all our work, is integral in improving the dissertation and its readability. My co-advisors are the first to get a copy of my dissertation and once I go through a round or two of edits, I will send the updated document to the rest of my committee. Importantly, per university guidelines, the PhD committee should receive my dissertation at least 4 weeks prior to my defense. However, I'm also well aware that I am not the only student supported by many of my committee members and I don't want to put this step off longer than i need.

My next step, since I've done a lot of the preparation work, is to start synthesizing my dissertation into a defense. All PhD candidates must defend their dissertations, and while I'm not sure how the process looks in performance and creative fields, in many areas, a defense is a formal seminar with an open session and closed session. In the open session, everyone who is interested is allowed to attend, listen to the seminar, and ask questions for a set time. Then, everyone who is not on the PhD committee is asked to leave, and the PhD committee gets time with the candidate to ask more questions which may be evaluative of the entire student's journey and grasp of their work. The preparations I make for my defense will also be useful as I prepare my Ocean Sciences Meeting presentation, which will happen a few weeks earlier. This presentation will be the first time I formally present the last research chapter of my dissertation, and will be a mini practice for a subset of my dissertation defense. One major difference, though, is that my presentation at the Ocean Sciences Meeting is a poster, so rather than copying and editing slides from my defense, I will need to reformat the information and consider how I can get the attention of passerbys during the conference.

Stay tuned for more updates and some pictures, as next week for the class I'm TA'ing, we are expecting to be out in the field collecting animals.