Holy crap! Do you guys have any idea how much extra time-sucking bullshit paperwork you have to submit just to *ask* for permission to write your dissertation!?!?
I did not. It's a lot!! It's taken me most of yesterday (and probably today too) to write and compile it all. My committee will be getting about 20+ pages of stuff (think they'll read it?) before the dreaded "ask for permission" meeting.
(On a side note, how infantilizing is it that one has to *ask for permission* to write one's dissertation? I mean, I understand the principle - it's good to have everyone on board that you're ready to be done some time before the defense, but couldn't they come up with a better way to phrase it? I passed candidacy years ago, I've worked my ass off and put up with a whole truck full of unbloggable bullshit and now I have to ask for permission to embark on this most heinous task?)
On the other hand, writing up a 6-page status report, plus timeline and a separate dissertation outline is making it clear that I *am* ready. We have previously agreed upon what needs to be done before asking for permission - check! - and what needs to be done before defending - on track! - so it looks (on paper at least) as if I might pull this off after all. The stupid checkboxes on the grad school forms still freak me out: "Are all essential experiments completed and all results known?" - Answer must be "yes" for permission to be granted. This is a new form and I think my committee will also be going "WTF is this shit anyway?" so yeah, here's hoping. Not all the results are known. But of the results that are not known, we will get a second paper out of them regardless of the outcome of the experiments - the results are interesting either way. So there.
Also, can you keep a secret? I haven't asked for or got permission to write yet...but I already started. Shhhh!
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
10 comments:
I always thought that was an awful phrase. Especially when I've been getting the advice to "start writing now" since I was a second year!
ha, it seems a bit sad that you have to ask... but I hope it all goes well. good luck with finishing the paper work and the meeting! Then the dissortation.
(I think it is good to start thinking about it early as you've done.)
...but I already started. Shhhh!
Gasp!!! For shame!!! LOL
We don't have to ask for permission here. Only our supervisor has to sign-off before we can hand it in to graduate studies (who then give it to the examining board). Good luck!
This isn't part of the process in my department, either. I'd actually never heard of it before I started reading blogs, so I suspect it's pretty rare in my field in general.
I think the permission to write thing sounds totally bizarre. Why would you not write up anything at all until you have all your data in? Like, what about the Manubeast? Isn't that part of your dissertation?
I obviously don't understand the format. I had to write a research proposal to achieve candidacy, and I have done all the things I said I'd do in that document, so now I can graduate. Is the system similar for biomed type students? How does the permission to write thing fit in?
(I think this comment might come across sort of judgey, but actually I'm just plain curious.)
I kept being told to get started anyway. And I know how you feel! My committee had to get something like a 40 page packet before the dread meeting.
Coming from a completely different doctoral system, I find the whole "permission to write" thing totally bizarre. I wrote and published each of my studies as I went along and after consulting with my advisor to confirm that I was nearing completion, had to submit a 2 page form to the grad school giving them a 1 month heads up that I was planning to submit my thesis.
Fwiw: my thesis was a big ass lit review and a series of published articles bookended by intro and concluding chapters.
It's like this:
1) Pass candidacy. This varies from one grad program to the next. In mine, we had 3 hour oral exam where a committee of 4 profs (selected at random, not your PI or your dissertation committee) grilled us on whatever they felt like. Six months later we had to submit a "mock R01" based on our proposed dissertation project but couched as if we were the PI, and would have 4-5 years funding with 4-5 trainees working for us. Two weeks after submitting this, we had to "defend" this "grant proposal" in a 2-hour seminar given to our dissertation committee.
I passed this several years ago.
2) Publish papers. (Depending on the lab/project/model organism this may happen throughout the student's studenthood, or they might publish all their papers towards the end. This last scenario is typical of mouse labs and is the trajectory I'm on.) Also, have status reports with your committee every six months.
3) In the 4th year, one must submit a "graduation timeline" to the committee (along with the usual status report). This outline what things the student must do before asking for permission to write, and what things the student must do before defending. The first time one submits this "timeline" it's pretty nebulous - most people finish in their 6th year so the timeline gets better defined at every meeting.
4) Upon completing the stuff that the needed to be done before asking for permission, the student arranges another committee meeting, submits a whole crap-ton of extra shit along with the status report, and the committee decides whether the student has "produced a body of work which will merit a Ph.D."...hopefully yes, at which point they grant you the tremendous privilege of having "permission to write". Papers may be in various states of completion at this point - this was decided in advance in the graduation timeline.
5) Compile papers into chapter format, bookended with an intro (a review paper you've already published if you were very clever) and summary, schedule defense with in the next 6months (usually shorter). So yes, most of the dissertation is already written and often published, which is why I find "asking for permission" to be so inane at this point.
6) Submit completed dissertation to committee. Two weeks later hold a public seminar on your work, immediately followed by a closed-session defense of your dissertation with the committee. Hopefully, they will find you smart enough and your work good enough (this is where it's really helpful to have your papers accepted or published prior to the defense - they'll have a hard time saying something that passed peer review is insufficient. Also, you must be the first author on at least one, but usually most of the papers that go into your dissertation).
7) Revise dissertation as per committee's request. Submit a whole lot more paperwork to the grad school, pay them an exorbitant fee for the privilege of getting the fuck out of there. Also submit several copies for binding (which you will also pay for yourself, even if all of them will eventually be property of the grad school). Once all this is done you are officially a Ph.D. Not before.
8) Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
Haha – my doctoral program went something like this:
1. Spend a year deciding on research topic, refining hypothesis, collecting preliminary data, getting new techniques/assays up and running, teaching and tearing hair out.
2. Assemble committee for proposal defense, submit <50 page document outlining proposed series of studies and orally defend the work you want to do. Committee gives you an official yay or nay after 30 minutes of nail-biting anticipation during which time they spent approximately 5 minutes discussing your candidature and 25 minutes arguing over where they want to have lunch.
3. Spend next 2-3 years bashing head up against a wall doing experiments. Publish as much as possible along the way, including your lit review. Watch your peers graduate while you slave away in lab.
4. Finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, organize postdoc position in US, help advisor select and invite external examiners to examine your thesis, send paperwork to grad school at least a month in advance of submitting thesis and then deliver a bugzillion soft-bound copies of your thesis to the grad school.
5. Spend a month or two chilling out, working as a research assistant for grad advisor, revise and resubmit thesis manuscripts for publication and then leave the land far, far away for postdoc.
6. Receive examiners’ reports back after one month as a postdoc, do corrections, comments and revisions in 24 hours, email completed document back to grad advisor so that he can have a bugzillion hardbound copies made and ask him very nicely if he can walk them over to the grad school for you on account of you being in another country and all.
7. Three weeks later, receive the official notification that your PhD degree has been conferred and gnash teeth at how long it look official notification to arrive – it would have been one week except that someone inadvertently sent the letter to a city with the same name that was in another country. Rejoice because finally receiving the official notification means that Postdoc U will finally accept you into their system and pay your salary.
PiT, that sounds a lot like the system in Far Off Land. And similar to my program in the U.S. until the last bit. We do the stuff we wrote in our proposal (which is not a fantasy project, but what we actually plan to do), then write the dissertation by compiling published papers or writing chapters that will later get submitted as papers, then submit to the committee 2-4 weeks before the closed oral defense. Two weeks later we give a public seminar.
Wait till you submit your first R01...
But, yar, I remember (albeit vaguely) getting ready to do mine. I even researched what needed to be done and it was still a massive clusterfuck between about 5 different buildings on campus...
Post a Comment