Proposal Defence

The proposal defence for my dissertation is over and done. I'm happy and grateful that the panel gave me the green light to proceed.

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I must admit that the week leading up to my defence was not that pleasant as I was worried over what the panel would have to say about my work.

What if I've used the wrong method?

What if the theoretical framework employed does not make sense?

What if the literature review is not extensive or current enough?

What if I couldn't answer their questions?

What if my proposal needs major amendments and changes?

The knowledge that the first reader who never fails to shake-up and attack and tear apart the work of his candidates during presentation did not help my increasing worry. I guess I just do not want to appear like a fool and be demotivated before the panel.

I don't know how and why but when I arrived at the venue to wait for my turn, I found out that my group had a totally different panel. The second candidate was already in the room for more than 40 minutes and it did make me wonder if they were very dissatisfied with her work to question her for so long.

After one hour, she came out and informed those waiting nervously that the profs were very kind. They had merely given her many suggestions on how to improve her work and it took one whole hour. At that moment, all my fears dissipated!   

What can I say except that God is just so very good to me. One of my prayer requests was that the well-known highly critical prof won't be nasty and what did God do? He had the whole panel changed and I entered the room before two most kind, gentle and encouraging profs.

And the best part is, they were very satisfied with my work and only suggested a very minor change!

The same could not be said for some of my friends under different panels. Though they could proceed with their research, some had to modify and amend nearly 60% of their work! And an unfortunate course mate had to re-submit his work within one week due to a minor oversight on his part which was caught by a very fastidious prof. It was that gruesome!

I'm not saying that I had it easy or my work is flawless but I just disagree with how proposal defense is run here, well at least in my uni. It is supposed to be a sharing and feedback session to help students improve their work. Not a 'tearing' / 'hentam' (bashing) session which seems quite the norm here. Is it any wonder that post-grads do not look forward to their defence?  

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Thank You so much, DD! You know my fears and erased them for me and I'm so very grateful!