Confederacy of a Dunce

Friday, February 27, 2009

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Well, it's finally finished. I am now officially dunce, PhD.

By "finished", I mean that today I submitted the final, approved copy of my PhD thesis (in the UK, "dissertation" usually refers to undergraduate projects, and "thesis" to PhDs. Makes things confusing since "dissertation" is reserved for PhDs in the US), and my degree has been officially registered as complete by my institution.

It was interesting to see how things are done here, vs. some of my peers who completed and defended elsewhere. In particular, the PhD examination is very different. Most of the people I know defended their PhD before a panel of 4-6 experts. In some cases there is also a formal presentation before a public audience (typically a formality as the real deal is already done behind closed doors). Here, the defense (or as they call it here, viva voce, customarily abbreviated to "viva" except in formal documents) is conducted by only two people: an internal examiner (someone from my institution), and an external examiner. The viva is held behind closed doors and no one else is permitted to be present.

As the day of my viva approached I became more and more worried about it, despite the fact that I was very well prepared for it. After all, I have been working on this stuff for years and years (vs the typical UK 3-year PhD), have presented a lot of it at conferences, and written up parts of it for various papers. So I'm used to defending it as part of the review process, and have also become used to thinking about the research in terms of narrative (how best to tell the story of how it all fits together). I am also quite familiar with the research topics of my two examiners, and tried to anticipate the critical angles they might take (one of my examiners is an expert in bilingualism and cognition; the other in language development and cognitive neuroscience). Nonetheless I worked myself into quite a state - by the day of the viva I was a very pale and nervous imitation of myself.

But actually, the viva was a very pleasant process. My internal examiner started by telling me that they found my thesis very interesting and of high quality, and that I should expect all sorts of difficult and probing questions, but this is the way a viva is meant to be. He then explained the exact sequence of events. First, how I came to the research questions included in the thesis. Second, the most important aspects of the thesis, in my eyes, and the most important aims. Third, walking through the thesis in detail, chapter by chapter, addressing specific concerns. And last, broader issues, problems, and the general question of where we go from here. I should try and elaborate rather than answering briefly (um, perhaps they should not have made this suggestion). So I just started going from the beginning.

The story of how the thesis came to be is a rather convoluted one, as (like a lot of PhD research) it started with an entirely different purpose and gradually morphed into a very different animal. So it took me a while to tell that particular tale, mentioning some of the further tangents along the way. I was more concise when it came to explaining the main aims and questions of the thesis, and then we turned to the examiners' specific questions. After the first three or four (maybe a dozen pages into the introduction), they suggested that I not elaborate on every single question, or we'd never finish the viva. So instead of answering each question, and then justifying my answers, I just answered the questions. It was not hardball at all, mainly clarifications and the like. By the time we got to the end, the "big questions" were a bit of an anticlimax. I felt like I stumbled on a couple of them (at least as I started to answer), but they didn't notice. All in all, this took about three hours. At the end, they decided that my thesis was accepted without changes.

Actually there were a few little bits of touch-up I had to do, mainly dropping in a couple of footnotes to address minor theoretical points, and providing more statistical details in some cases where I'd glossed over them. This latter part actually turned out to be a lot more work than I wanted to do at this stage, but I managed to get it done just in time for verification and approval (it is the internal examiner's responsiblity to ensure that the final version is, indeed, acceptable).

Once this was done, I had to get the thesis printed and bound according to university regulations. After quite a lot of fiddling about (font selection, working to make sure the layout and design of my figures and tables were acceptable, double-checking and triple-checking), I created the final PDF and emailed it off to our local binder (Collis, Bird & Withey, N5. I was very happy with their service & would enthusiastically recommend it to others). And today I went to hand it in. Many of my colleagues remember this step fondly; many institutions have a "Thesis Person" (usually Thesis Lady) who checks the printed thesis with an extremely close eye for details (caliper measurements of margins, page overlay templates, measuring individual characters, and so on), and who is very likely to reject it on the basis of some tiny detail. Here, instead, there appears to be no such person. UCL does have a funny kind of format (European style: text running up the spine, so the spine lettering is upside down compared to my other [English] books on the shelf when the thesis is right side up) but a fairly limited set of requirements. So then it was just a matter of collecting the bound copies when they were ready, filling out a few forms, and delivering the thesis (plus a PDF on CD-ROM in an envelope pasted in the back cover) to Student Records.

And that's what I did today. No eagle-eyed Thesis Person inspecting the margins and other details, just a quick check that all the forms were completed, and now I have a form confirming that I have submitted the final copies of my thesis. I suppose there may be a Thesis Person behind the scenes who will complain about my font selection, and make me do the whole thing over again from scratch. But I like to think there is not. I have been told I will receive a confirmation letter in the next week or two.

And then all that is left is the graduation in September; apparently I am now a graduand (a term that is new to me. OED: "One about to be graduated or to receive a university degree".). A handy term to fill in the gap between completion and the official ceremony, but it leaves me wondering when exactly I actually earn the right to call myself PhD. Upon confirmation that I am on the "pass list"? Or does the actual moment only occur at that moment I go through graduation? Surely not the latter - attending graduation ceremony is optional. In which case there is little use for the term "graduand" save in referring to anticipation of the Graduation Ceremony Experience itself.

Speaking of which, I can hardly finish without referring to the graduation costume. Here are the details of the regulations concerning my graduation outfit (I will save photos for Saptember):

Hood: Of the slim shape (no, I don't know what this means) in silver grey cloth fully lined with red silk.

Gown: Of the same shape as that worn by Cambridge Doctors (I assume this means that we are the same shapes underneath as well!) in silver grey cloth with facings of red and sleeve linings of grey, a red cord and button on sleeves.

Cap: A round cap of black velvet with silver grey cord and tassels.

Doesn't that sound pretty?

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Friday, February 27, 2009 2:58:34 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)