Dissertation Defense

Last Friday I defended my dissertation and following the defense I was greeted by my committee with words that I had never heard addressed to me. Before I tell you what they were let me describe the dissertation defense process for those of you who do not know about it.

The first step in the entire dissertation process (after you have a good research idea, examine the literature, and write a proposal) is to have a proposal meeting in which you give your committee a proposal document that reviews the existing literature, describes the research project you want to do, and how you will analyze the data. Assuming that your are able to convince your committee that the project you want to do is well designed and needed, you then start collecting the data (after you have IRB approval), analyze the data, and then write up your findings. Once you have written up the findings and your committee chair (Advisor) thinks that the document is ready to go, you send the manuscript out to your committee schedule the defense meeting (with the committee and notify the department and grad school).

At the start of the defense meeting everyone except the committee members leaves the room and the committee decides if the candidate can proceed with the defense. If they think that the candidate is ready then everyone can come back in the room and the defense starts. During the defense the candidate (student) presents the findings of the dissertation project with probably a good deal of questions. The night before my defense a friend sent me a link about a part of the defense that I was not aware of (the snake fighting portion- http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight-portion-of-your-thesis-defense They never tell you about the snake fight in the grad school manual but prepare anyway). Thankfully I had time to prepare.

My meeting was scheduled for two hours and given the number of hypotheses I had and number of questions that I received the meeting took the full two hours. Once the presentation and questions are finished, everyone except the committee members leave the room and the committee deliberates regarding whether the candidate has successfully defended the dissertation and earned their Ph.D. I can tell you that waiting in the hall during that time is brutal. Thankfully I had two very nice people waiting with me (THANK YOU SHANA and DANIEL). When I went back into the room I was worried that the committee wanted changes and for me to defend again (I guess it was just a lack of confidence). The committee greeted me with just a few words: Congratulations Dr. Banks.

WOW

For the first time someone was using the words Dr. Banks and not talking about my parents!!!

Following my defense my committee had suggested a new analysis and a handful of changes, which I was able to take care of this week. Today I submitted what should be the final paper work to the graduate school!

So now it is time to celebrate! And there is additional good news that I will share soon regarding what I will be doing in the fall.

So thank you to everyone that has been a part of my success over the last several years.

It all leads up to this

Tomorrow I defend my dissertation and accomplish the last step in graduate school. I started in graduate school in August of 2001 in a developmental psychology program. After several years of classes and research I discovered that developmental psychology was not my main interest and I was much more interested in cognition. Once I finished my masters degree I left the program and worked for several years. The years that I spent working, doing research for a living, changed my focus and interest in research completely. I realized that I loved research and needed to go back to school and earn my PhD. So my very understanding wife willingly moved to North Texas so that I could do so.

After several years of classes and many hours working in the lab collecting data and writing I am almost finished. The last step in the process is to defend my dissertation. Hopefully I will have good news to report tomorrow!

Dissertating

Ok so dissertating is probably not a real word but it is a reasonable single word description of what I have been doing. I finished collecting my data during finals week and after finishing posting final grades I have been working on my dissertation full steam! I had my data analysis finished last week until I had a great idea that I thought I could test using some SEM analysis. After spending five days working on cleaning data and trying to find a good fitting model in SEM it was time to give up on the SEM and call my data analysis complete.

So with my results section complete and a first draft of my discussion section finished as well I am feeling pretty good about finishing things up. I am hoping that by the end of the day tomorrow I will have a good draft to send to out. Hopefully I am getting very close to being finished.

Until I the manuscript is done I will press on with dissertating.....and a ride or run when I need to clear my head and regain some focus so I can write.