I assume they liked your work because of the implications. The defense did take place on a boat in the middle of the ocean, right?
That seems really dark…
Did you manage to sell any loot boxes, or correct for multiple hypothesis testing?
Indeed, congratulations. Though my defense was back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, it was still nerve wracking.
But, not nearly as nerve wracking as what came after. Having to take the printed copies of the dissertation to the blue-haired ladies in the graduate office who were responsible for, I kid you not, measuring with rulers your page formatting, margins, spacing, etc. Didn’t matter if a Nobel-prize winning professor had vetted you… If you your margins were a smidge off, no Ph.D. for you! (Well, you’d have to retype it at least). So bizarre.
That is exactly what my professor told me today, while helping me prepare for defense.
Congrats, Lego!!!
@legowarrior: could you perhaps explain a bit how this thesis defense works in the US (assuming you are in the US)? I’m asking this because it appears to be different from what happens here in the Netherlands: when I’m done with my thesis (hopefully next year), the dissertation will be sent to a reading committee, which will basically give a go/no-go. If it is a no-go, I am pretty much screwed: officially I am not allowed to change anything, so if they decide it is not up to standard, I will not finish my PhD (unofficially, they may allow for some changes, but this isn’t really how it should go…). In other words: my promotor and co-promoter have the important task of judging my work and assessing whether it is good enough to go to the reading committee…
After the reading committee approves my dissertation, there will be a public ceremony in which I have to defend my thesis to a group of professors (and friends/family members). At that stage, I can’t fail my defense anymore (unless they find something horrible like plagiarism), so this whole ceremony is really just for show. They will ask questions, probably nasty ones too, but no matter what I say, I have already passed. In fact, I could faint, and my paranymph could read the introduction out loud, and I would still pass. (hence my earlier remark: enjoy! That is what I hope to be doing during my defense).
But in your case, this appears to be rather different. If I am understanding correctly, this defense was a stage prior to sending your dissertation to the reading committee? Or does it work completely different? And will you get a final ceremony as well, including a public defense?
Would love to know more, if you are willing to share.
Good luck!! That sounds pretty scary, but you’ve had 10 years to prepare so if anyone can do it, you can!
So, keeping in mind that this is a Master’s thesis, the process might differ for ones PhD.
The thesis defense occurs only after your advisor approves the work, so in many cases the draft you bring into the defense is the finished copy. The defense is split into a formal 20 minute presentation, which anyone (in my case, nobody) can attend. There is an opportunity to answer audience questions and the like.
After the open part, the student and committee of three professors goes over the thesis with the student for about 45 to 60 minutes, asking questions looking for holes and the like. I was able to answer all the questions without too much trouble, but, as I mentioned earlier, I had left put a my procedures for some reason, and one of my committee member (who was Dutch by the way, small world) was concerned about my results section. I had run a shit load of ANOVAs, because I was looking at a lot individual parts, and he was concerned about false positives (they happen 5% of the time, which is why you had a paper on the Mozart effect).
The committee has 3 options at the end of the session. Accept, accept conditional or reject (with the option for the student to resubmit).
Accept conditional means that only slight changes are necessary, and nothing that impacts the body of the work significantly. In my case, my conditions were 3 fold.
Put in my procedures.
Tighten up to results section and reduce the number of Tables (the 15 of the 19 tables could be moved to the appendix)
Talk a but more of the implications.
None of these change the findings or the conclusions, so there is no need to go through a second defense. The committee with comfortable with my level of knowledge of both my research and my study.
Great job! I always had a few ideas I wanted to pursue and continue my schooling, but I never got around to it. Your thesis topic sounds really interesting.
Congrats, lego!
Thanks a lot for explaining that, and congratulations on getting it accepted, albeit conditionally. Just the last loose ends to wrap up now!
Congrats! So what are the plans for the future and do they involve fighting for (or against) plastic bricks?
Why are you defending Thesius? The dude was an actual hero! He killed the frikkin Minotaur!
PS: Congrats!
May I say, the people of Qt3 are wonderful and strange!
My next step is to apply for graduate (and hope I’m not too late for May of this year) and start looking at other positions.
As much as I enjoy the 401(k) industry, having an MA in Psychology doesn’t really push me along, so I’m looking at other fields were my degree is Psychology Research might be valued (Yes, it’s a MA, not MS, which upset me a bit). I am looking at jobs with the Federal Government. They usually have a few openings that are exclusive to recent graduates and if I can find something dealing with statistics or dealing with the 401(k) industry, that might be cool.
Not having time for forum games makes sense with the final lap on the MA, though.
I couldn’t agree more. I love this place.
And again, congrats!
Just a few weeks ago I read a scathing article on results mining in the psych-dietary field. I wish I could remember the research lead who was abusing this system because it was unreal the lengths he was going to scrape results out of nothing. He’s actually a higher level doctor who dragged plenty of PhD candidates into down this rabbit hole with him. But that comment just triggered my memory.
I’m glad to see your in a department that is averse to that kind of thing, and it certainly means more for your acceptance - which I’m sure you’ll get just fine as long as you don’t finish off your dissertation while drunk :)
Oh, I figure that’s true.
A lot of results were minimal because I had a rather small sample size, but all of it agreed with prior research (a lot of my statistics we’re just replications of prior studies, since I had similar procedures).
Kind of funny to think back on, but I actually have a masters degree myself, and I didn’t have to do a thesis for it. Mine’s in accounting, and I did a lot of coursework (obvs) and some teaching/tutoring and actually assisting a professor with some research for articles he was working on. I was a serious burnout case by the time I was done, think if I’d had to deal with a thesis on top of all that I’d have cracked.