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20 March 2008

I just submitted my PhD thesis. It is called "Quantifying evolution and natural selection in vertebrate noncoding sequence."
post by: grouse at: 09:20 | 45 comments
That's easy for YOU to say. Congraduations... now, let's just hope that no rabid Creationists see it.
posted by wendell 20 March | 09:26
w00t! Get a load of you, smarty-trousers! (Soon to be Doctor Smarty-Trousers, of course.) Congratulations. Must feel good to have all that hard work done.
posted by elizard 20 March | 09:27
Congratulations! I love that feeling of handing something over because it's DONE.
posted by Stewriffic 20 March | 09:30
Awesome, congrats! I still remember the day I handed in my PhD, lo these 7 years ago now. That was a fantastic day. I have a photo of everyone in my lab (all of us incredibly shitfaced) right beside me on the desk.
posted by gaspode 20 March | 09:33
Congrats!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero 20 March | 09:33
Yay!!
posted by sperose 20 March | 09:40
Thanks everyone! Yeah, it feels pretty good to get it over with. Sad in a way, too. I've been a student for 22 years and now that's over. So on the one hand I'm kinda... what NOW? And on the other hand I think of all the stuff I have to do by this weekend.

I think the tradition here is to get really drunk after your defense. For years, I have been planning to spend that evening in The Eagle, a pub of great historical importance in my field.
posted by grouse 20 March | 09:48
Oh, you should do both. Handing in and defense.
posted by gaspode 20 March | 09:49
Wow, that's excellent- huge congrats, grouse!
posted by BoringPostcards 20 March | 09:52
So wait,

Did you just submit it to your committee? Or pass your defense?

Or did you just turn in the final, revised and finished everything complete with signatures to the morlocks deep in the bowels of your school's archive or library, so you're really no-shit 100% done?

Congratulations in any case, but there's something wonderfully anticlimactic about the final thing: handing a few stacks of paper over to an undergrad office worker.
posted by ROU Xenophobe 20 March | 09:53
Nope, I just submitted the thesis. No defense yet.

Congratulations in any case, but there's something wonderfully anticlimactic about the final thing: handing a few stacks of paper over to an undergrad office worker.

Yeah. She was really nice about it, though. It was the first time I had ever actually visited the university graduate studies office. Their perfunctory and bureaucratic reputation was belied by her enthusiasm for the submitted thesis of someone she didn't know.
posted by grouse 20 March | 09:57
Congratulations, Grouse! Like ROU Xenophobe, I guess I wonder what this means, but either way, rock on! Most excellent. I hope you are totally totally done.
posted by msali 20 March | 10:02
Here is what happens next. Gotta love the bureaucracy.

1. The Board of Graduate Studies sends my thesis to the Degree Committee.

2. The Degree Committee will send the thesis out to examiners.

3. The examiners have to read the thesis and decide on a date for my defense.

4. After the defense, they will send a report to the Degree Committee.

5. The Degree Committee (which I believe meets once every month or two) will then recommend an action to the Board of Graduate Studies.

6. The Board of Graduate Studies will vote on whether to accept my thesis, or to ask me to make changes, requiring me to be examined again or not.

7. After a possible repetition of steps 1-5 I will have to submit a hardbound thesis.

8. I will have to ask my college (a wholly separate institution from anything mentioned above) to present me for graduation on a certain day.

9. At graduation, the students go up in groups of four, and each one simultaneously holds onto a finger of the Vice-Chancellor or her deputy as they confer the degree in Latin. Oh yes, the graduation ceremony is held entirely in Latin.

10. ???

11. Profit!
posted by grouse 20 March | 10:06
Man, for me, handing in wasn't anticlimactic at all, it was a HUGE deal. Maybe because in my department you weren't expected to hand in until you had very few revisions expected... my examiners basically corrected spelling and grammar and one got annoyed because I kept using weight instead of mass.
posted by gaspode 20 March | 10:06
Step 10 kills me. Tradition!
posted by muddgirl 20 March | 10:11
Wow, that's huge - what an accomplishment! CONGRATS!

You must do something to mark the event. We go through life waiting for the event to happen that's worthy of the glass of champagne and nothing ever seems to quite like it's the moment. Well, this is one of those moments - they all are, really; we just don't give them notice. You absolutely must find some way to mark this day as special!
posted by mightshould 20 March | 10:15
Here handing in is a very big deal as well. You are expected to turn in a piece of work that could conceivably be deposited without revision. The university even encourages people to turn in their first submission hardbound so that there need be no additional delay between acceptance and deposition (of course, I didn't do that, seems arrogant somehow). Of course, there are usually corrections.

Also, deadlines are somewhat stricter than in the U.S. If I didn't finish by the end of March, my department was basically threatening to lock me out. Which, you know, would make it even harder to finish.

A good thought, mightshould.
posted by grouse 20 March | 10:17
Total congrats! I celebrated my defense by going home and -- I was about to make last minute changes while my now ex-husband went to visit his mom instead of celebrating with me -- but I was kidnapped by some friends and treated to frozen custard sundae. I celebrated my deposit (after making said revisions) with a long, long nap.

Way to go!
posted by lleachie 20 March | 10:45
How exciting! Congratulations, and good for you!

Also, deadlines are somewhat stricter than in the U.S. If I didn't finish by the end of March, my department was basically threatening to lock me out. Which, you know, would make it even harder to finish.

I was just reading that Harvard decided they didn't want grad students taking decades to finish, so they've told departments that they'll take away one grad student slot for every eight (I think) grad students who are there for longer than seven years. I thought it was an interesting strategy to exert "trickle-down pressure."
posted by occhiblu 20 March | 10:46
Thanks!

occhiblu, that's the way it works here in most departments except they take away one slot for each one student who takes longer than four years. So a bit more severe. Not in my department, but there is still an environment of pressure to finish.
posted by grouse 20 March | 11:10
Yikes. No wonder you grouse. :-)
posted by occhiblu 20 March | 11:12
Wow grouse - congratulations! But what are you doing still on the internet? You should be drunk by now.

In Australia it's three years, extendable to 3 1/2. Then the money stops (and you - and your project - have to be pretty bloody special to be allowed to continue without funding).
posted by goo 20 March | 11:26
Forgive my ignorance, but for the three- and four-year programs -- does that also include masters-level work? (*Is* there masters-level work outside the US?) How does that work?
posted by occhiblu 20 March | 11:33
My program is a four year program. You basically start your dissertation research on day one. At some point there is two months of coursework. No teaching, and you don't spend a lot of time on qualifying examinations.

Most English PhD programs are allegedly three years, but no one finishes in three. I think it is a big lie, and in some disciplines they are moving to a four-year plan.

People may or may not do a master's first.
posted by grouse 20 March | 11:40
That's really great, grouse!

I don't know how you guys do it - I hated every second of school & it seemed like an exercise in memorization and regurgitation. I'm told it gets more "real world" in graduate studies, but I was miserable in undergrad and the GRE melted my brain. You guys have way more stamina than I do!!
posted by chewatadistance 20 March | 11:40
Awesome! Congratulations! I know what you mean about the anticlimax - when I decided I'd finished my master's, closed everything down and walked away from my desk, it didn't feel that great. However, the next week when I realised I could actually relax and not feel guilty about it, was amazing. Which is why I'm questioning why I'm now spending my evenings doing a post-grad course!
posted by TheDonF 20 March | 11:44
what NOW?

Now, after 22 years, it seems as though you are finally ready to become a mime. So on with step 10!
Congrats!
posted by Hellbient 20 March | 11:55
You clever bastard. Well done.
posted by essexjan 20 March | 12:04
for the three- and four-year programs -- does that also include masters-level work?

No, not really. There's very little coursework, it's dissertation from day one, as with grouse. In the social sciences students usually audit pertinent classes but aren't assessed.

Masters programs are a bit different - a research masters is just a smaller research project and shorter dissertation than a doctorate, whereas a coursework masters is mainly coursework with a semester-long research project and thesis at the end. Both are 18-month to 2-year programs. Professional programs are usually coursework masters, but most disciplines offer both. Professional doctorates - a longer coursework masters - are quite new but increasing in number and popularity as Australia catches the creeping credentialism inflicting the US.
posted by goo 20 March | 12:12
Doctorates are soooo sexy.
My, it's warm in here.
posted by ethylene 20 March | 12:14
Thanks for the info, goo and grouse.

Also, you two should totally start a band.
posted by occhiblu 20 March | 12:18
Well done, indeed, grouse! I'm delighted for you. Congratulations -- pop the champagne!
posted by scody 20 March | 12:29
you two should totally start a band

I'm in! I'm thinking about going to Oxford next week for the Literary Festival anyway. I'll bring my tambourine!
posted by goo 20 March | 12:34
(fwiw, it's the same in New Zealand, surprise, surprise...3 years with a full stipend, you can extend to another year with a half stipend, and when I needed another 6 months I had to go part time and work as well)
posted by gaspode 20 March | 12:41
Wow! You get thesis whuffles!
posted by Specklet 20 March | 12:49
Man, for me, handing in wasn't anticlimactic at all, it was a HUGE deal.

Nonononono --

Handing it in, in the sense of submitting your dissertation to your committee, *is* a huge deal.

What was anticlimactic was after that -- after submitting, after scheduling a defense, after defending, after making some minor revisions (minor enough that they didn't need reapproval), there was the real, honest to God last step:

Taking the final, official, fully approved, revised, everything is done dissertation, printing it on the special high-cotton lasts-forever paper, and handing a few copies of it over to the archival people. Following grouse, depositing the dissertation.

*That* was anticlimactic in a wonderful way -- here's the last thing I have to do before I am a Ph-fucking-D, and it turns out to be make some photocopies and give them to a filing clerk in the basement.

Now I think about it, I suppose that *really* the last thing I had to do was take all of the library books back. I had all my books-for-work and two or three waist-high stacks of novels, so hoo boy that was fun.
posted by ROU Xenophobe 20 March | 13:23
Oh yeah, I can see how that would be SERIOUSLY anticlimactic. I know people who have procrastinated for weeks or months before doing that because they could not be bothered.
posted by grouse 20 March | 13:39
Congrats, grouse, you smart thing!
posted by LoriFLA 20 March | 14:02
Congratulations!

The thing that your link doesn't mention is that you are granted your degree in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti -- it's not entirely clear to me what the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have to do with it, but fair enough.
posted by matthewr 20 March | 14:52
Congratulations, Dr. Grouse!
posted by jason's_planet 20 March | 16:17
That is totally fantastic. Congratulations!
posted by Miko 20 March | 18:31
I wanted to find copies of the Latin for graduation but couldn't. If you know the formulae, I'd love to see them, matthewr.
posted by grouse 20 March | 19:57
I don't know where you could find the whole text of the Senate House ceremony, but this page has two short passages used in the graduation itself:
"Dignissime domine, Domine Procancellarie et tota Academia praesento vobis hunc virum (hanc mulierem) quem (quam) scio tam moribus quam doctrina esse idoneum (idoneam) ad gradum assequendum (name of degree); idque tibi fide mea praesto totique Academiae."

and,
"Auctoritate mihi commissa admitto te ad gradum (name of degree), in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sanctii."

I only found out about the Trinitarian formula this morning in an email from the Praelector. Apparently the university allows you to opt out of it if you're not religious. But irritatingly, you are no longer allowed to graduate in national dress.
posted by matthewr 20 March | 22:06
Piled higher and Deeper. :) Kudos!
posted by Joe Invisible 20 March | 22:50
Thanks matthewr.
posted by grouse 21 March | 03:51
← Because I might as well let the whole world know what a nerd I am || Serious lack of motivation →

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