MadLabRat, PhC

Some wonderful news from the past week: I passed my Oral/General Exam!

This was a huge relief and a great feeling. I'm so happy it's over. I'm now officially a PhD Candidate. The last 4 years? I guess slave, underpaid worker, or plain old graduate student was the appropriate title. I celebrated with some good food, better friends, awesome Girlfriend, and some karaoke.

Fig. 1

As for the exam itself, it went well overall. I had prepared and practiced my presentation profusely, and I believe it paid off. I received several compliments on the layout of my data and project aims in its accessibility to the audience. Always a good thing to hear. Advice from this experience #1: A clear presentation (bullet points and plentiful images) allows you to successfully communicate your ideas to a broad audience and prevents confusion. This last point may seem obvious, but in academia, even the slightest bit of confusion may offend certain professors' sensibilities, resulting in angry ape-like behavior (see Fig. 1).

My committee was a bit more aggressive in  dwelling on certain aspects of my project, aspects I didn't expect to be the focus of discussion. That was another major take-away point for me here, and for anyone preparing for such an exam (where anything is fair game for the panel to ask/discuss)-- you really never know what points will flip the switch in certain people's minds and lead them to focus on something specific. This is why it's important to think carefully about how you say things, what you choose to say, and perhaps, to get to know your committee members a bit better before the exam. I am definitely guilty of not engaging them sooner in this process, but I'm not going to get into the reasons for that here.

Even though I felt I had some sort of answer or talking point about anything that was mentioned, in some ways, I felt I somehow came up a little short in my committee's eyes. I'm honestly unsure how accurate my personal assessment of this situation is, seeing as I did pass after all. But for me, if it's not A's across the board with a glowing record of achievement (which you don't often receive in grad school), it's obviously a failure. Maybe my best advice, then, is to steer clear of the PhD track if you're a perfectionist at heart.