If you were to ask me about the biggest lesson I’ve learned from grad school, I’d have to go back to the spring quarter of my first year (the spring of 2013). As mentioned in the previous post, this was an intense stage of my graduate education, since I was preparing to defend my first proposal (1). Ultimately, the challenges I faced – and their solutions – were rooted in this question: who defines the value of my project?
I won’t go in to all the details of exactly why preparing this proposal was especially intense for me, but multiple variables were involved, including changing my planned project and advisor at the end of winter quarter. Let's fast forward to my first committee meeting: the proposal defense (2). In the weeks leading up to the meeting, I was incredibly overwhelmed by the prospect of having an “evaluation” with no clear guidance on how to “study” or prepare for it. “You mean, I’ll give my presentation, and the committee can ask *literally anything* they want?” It seemed like a psychological ploy.
Talking to classmates offered a little consolation: “My questions were mostly related to methods,” they said. I was quickly about to learn that my classmates’ experiences did NOT necessarily reflect what would happen to me, but that’s a discussion for another post.
Well, the meeting day arrived. After a last-minute room/building change, I gave a presentation to my committee, which was followed by a question period. Once the questions were done, the committee asked me to leave the room so they could deliberate. Let’s just say that my first committee meeting was pretty stressful. While I was anticipating questions related to my methods, most of the discussion ended up focusing on my goals, making me question the foundation of why I was doing my project. When I left the room, I knew that I would likely pass – but I didn’t feel like it had gone “well.” The committee asked questions which I struggled to understand, let alone answer as well as I thought I should have. Sure enough, I did pass my first proposal defense, but I remember thinking that this whole PhD endeavor was going to be pretty rough. “If this meeting was so difficult, what will my comprehensive exam be like? Or, my dissertation defense?”
At this point, I resolved to go into survival mode; grad school would be hard, but I knew I was supposed to be there, so I just had to persevere and “get through it.” Over the subsequent months, I gained field work experience and began trying to make sense of my data. An important turning point occurred that fall; I believe it was late October or early November. We had just returned from a geology conference, the fall quarter was well underway, and I knew that – to keep up with my timeline – I needed to start thinking about scheduling my comprehensive exam. So, I finished a draft of a paper and sent it to my advisor. When I met with him to get his feedback, he said, “It needs work.” We proceeded to “discuss” the paper for at least an hour or hour and a half, with me trying to justify what I had done, and him not being convinced. At the end of the meeting, I asked whether we should try to schedule the comps exam, and he said, “No, we’re not ready for that.”
While timeline-driven me was not happy with this response, in an interesting way it motivated me to find solutions and make my project better. Over the next couple weeks, I critically evaluated my project, and thought seriously about how I could defend my work. After making substantial changes to the paper, I sent it back to my advisor. When I went to meet with him again, I asked if he had read the paper, and he said yes and walked out from behind his desk to the small meeting table in his office. He then said [paraphrased], “Sarah, this is a good paper. I wanted you to take ownership of and develop this project, and you have done that.”
"I wanted you to take ownership of and develop this project, and you have done that."
Looking back, my project was still a looong way from where it needed to be, but this was a significant turning point: I was beginning to gain confidence as the research became my own. While I wasn’t quite ready to do my comps exam that fall, we eventually scheduled it for the following February.
In the weeks leading up to this committee meeting, I was – to my own amazement – not all that nervous, because I was happy with how my project was coming along. The day of the comprehensive arrived, and although I was nervous that day, I went into “defense mode” once my presentation started. My formal presentation went smoothly, but during the question time, I did encounter some “surprises.” While I was expecting questions related to my project (based on conversations with classmates – as if I didn’t learn the first time), some of the questions definitely went a bit rogue, though my advisor later informed me that this was perfectly acceptable for the comprehensive exam. However, the key here is that – even though the questions were weird – I did not allow them to intimidate me. I didn’t know all of the answers, but I reasoned out responses with the information I had, which was what the committee wanted to see. At the end of the question time, I left the room for them to deliberate. Though it would have seemed unfathomable to me at my proposal defense, I walked out knowing that the meeting had gone well. And it was not because I had easy questions. It was because my focus had shifted from being evaluated (passive) to defending (active). I finally understood that the value in my research did not come from my committee; it came from my defense. The committee didn’t change, but I changed, and that made the difference.
The value in your research does not come from your committee; it comes from your defense.
A PhD program (or a research-based Masters) is fundamentally different from every other stage of education up through the bachelor’s level. I am so thankful for my undergraduate education and for the amazing research opportunities I had; however, a bachelor’s degree is still not a PhD. In our education system, students are taught to understand content, and then to demonstrate that understanding for an evaluation; in short, you take in information, and then spit that information back out for a test. Sure, critical thinking is involved, but you are still – for the most part – working with content that was developed by other people. A PhD is completely different: in a PhD program, you design a complex project with the goal of producing new information. While undergraduate students with a good research background may “know” this, I found that the “information and evaluation-focused” mentality subconsciously affected the way I handled various grad school challenges – especially in the beginning of my program.
When I defended my first proposal, I expected the evaluation to be clear and straightforward; I was looking for my committee to tell me what to study and what was “right.” I remember talking to one of my professors during the spring of my first year, and we were discussing an upcoming seminar presentation (related to my research) that would be given by one of my other committee members. I told this professor, “I’m so glad he’s coming; he will show you all why my research is important.” The professor then smiled, and said, “You can do that.” I was annoyed with his response at the time, but he was exactly right. When I started grad school, I was doing my professors' research. Now, I’m doing my research. I think it is normal for students to want their professors’ approval, but at the end of the day, the grad school process is ultimately about taking ownership of your own project.
So the key lesson here is this: Don’t look to your committee to tell you how good your project is; do a project that you know is good, and defend it. How do you know your project is good? Well, that’s what you’ll spend 4-8+ years figuring out. Your committee is there to advise you, and it is also their job to evaluate – but their evaluations won’t fill your hundreds of dissertation pages. At your defense, the committee will sign a signature page; the rest of the book is on your work.
I defended my dissertation in March. While a dissertation defense is the culmination of a PhD program, I did not become a PhD scientist at my defense. I became a scientist through the process of taking ownership of a project, and by spending years learning – often the hard way – how to solve research problems. As an undergraduate, I did research. In grad school, I became a researcher.
As an undergraduate, I did research. In grad school, I became a researcher.
But the important point here is that this is a process. If you are a new grad student and feel overwhelmed by what you’ve read so far, this next part is for you. Graduate school will not just be about taking more tests and writing more papers; you will be learning how to do science. So, when you’re preparing for those early committee meetings, don’t freak out about what you think your committee might ask you (though it is, of course, a smart idea to anticipate possible questions/critiques). Focus on making your project as good as it can be, and treat their feedback as an opportunity to make it better. Grad school is hard, but with every challenge comes the potential for growth. It’s a crazy and difficult journey, but ultimately a worthwhile one.
Fun fact: Because of the significance of the comps process in my research experience, I used the same PowerPoint background from my comps exam in my dissertation defense presentation.
(1) You may have noticed that I said I was working on my first proposal at that time. In my department, some students defend only one proposal during their entire PhD program; others, however, start with a “comprehensive project proposal,” complete the comprehensive exam, and then go on to defend another proposal for the rest of their dissertation. While the two-proposal approach may seem like extra work (certainly seemed that way to me at the time), it is meant to allow students to get started on research while providing additional time to develop the larger-scale plan for the dissertation. Our department’s comprehensive exam is not a traditional “exam,” but rather a test of whether a student can do research: he/she writes a focused proposal, carries out any necessary field and/or lab work, writes up a publication-style paper, and then defends it to the committee. For most students, the comps project is, essentially, a defense of part of the dissertation research; accordingly, some write a separate proposal, but others do not.
(2) I know that for some students, the first meeting is not a proposal defense, but that’s how it worked out for me.
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