Author: andy

My Prelim oral defense was on Wednesday…and was pretty friggin’ hard…but I got through it mostly unscathed. The exam consisted of a 20 min PowerPoint presentation generally reviewing all the stuff I put in my 25-page proposal, hitting the fine points and rationale, but not going through any specific experiments. This was followed by another 1 hr and 40 min worth of questioning on subjects peripherally related to what I’d written. A few questions were about why I’d chosen certain drugs, or why use this model for your experiments, or why this cell type, etc. Other questions were kinda related to what I was proposing, but mostly not.

In the end, I got 5 “yes” votes (out of 5) and was given a form letter from the dean saying that I need to be done by 2012. I certainly hope I don’t take that long, but hey…whatever…

Anyway, now I’m going to chill until after Christmas and then get started in earnest on the following:

1). I need to fill out the paperwork for “Advancement to Doctoral Candidacy,” get my signatures and get it sent off to the Dean’s office. Essentially, I’ve been a “graduate student” and now I’ll be an official “doctoral student,” which allows me to have fewer credit hours per semester (I only have 12 left that I need to complete…between now and 2012…heh…) and still remain a “full-time student.” It’s really just a formality, but still…can be annoying to get it all done…

2). Related to #1, I need to form a Doctoral Thesis Committee. This committee is separate from the one that I took the oral defense with, but can consist of the same members if so desired. These people are going to be in charge of pushing me along to make sure I’m not actually here until 2012. I’ll have to present my data for them every once and awhile (a few times a year?) and they’ll be the ones that decide when I’m done. They’re also there to “protect” me from my boss (which won’t be a problem…) so that she doesn’t keep me around too long doing lots of work when I could be out on my own… That’s their job, at least, but they won’t have to police Dr. Macarthur much, I expect…

3). Write up a paper for publication on the data I’ve obtained thus far. I want to get it started so I know what other experiments I need to start to fill out the paper. As Dr. Macarthur says (and I agree with), any paper should “tell a story”…so have a beginning, middle and end. I’ve got the beginning, certainly, and bits and pieces of “middle” and “end”…most of it being done, but I think I could use a bit more data to make the whole paper more complete.

4). I’ve got to present a paper on February 12th for “Journal Club.” This is done once a year (all students do it) and we have to pick a paper that we want to present in front of the department during lunch. It’s supposed to be pretty informal…but sometimes isn’t… 😛 Regardless, I’ve got to pick a paper first, then write up a PowerPoint presentation on it and generally know what I’m talking about with regards to the document. I’m not terribly worried about it, but it’s something else to complete…

That’s about it! Relatively downhill from here… I’m shooting to be done in early 2010, but if all my data comes in beautifully (as I know it will… :-P), then I could be out in late-2009. We’ll see…

Brooke just wants to go to Europe…so, the sooner the better for her… 😛

A day that will forever live in infamy… At 1:00 pm on December 12, 2007, I’ll orally defend (“D-day” as in “defense”) my preliminary thesis proposal. This is described as being the most difficult aspect of the Ph.D. process and will likely last nearly 2 hours, consisting of a brief introductory presentation by me, followed by lines of questioning about the subject and related subjects until they “feel I’m done” (or dead). The committee got together today to say that the 25-page document I turned in is “sufficient” and we can move ahead with the oral defense, and they set the date as next Wednesday.

I’ve been surprisingly good over these past few weeks with studying my old flash cards and review articles on the subjects of Parkinson disease, oxidative stress, the mitochondria and apoptosis (amongst others). I’m going to take a few days off between now and then to buckle down a few facets of the thesis proposal, as each committee member gave me a brief page with a few “suggestions” for things to think about. These are things they may ask about during the oral defense, but maybe not. Regardless, they thought everything was explained relatively well, but had a few questions on why I picked some experiments over others, or some time points over others, etc.

I feel pretty good right now about the whole thing, but I imagine that my feelings will change as we get closer. If I fail it (which does happen…), then I’ll get the opportunity to do it again…but I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that (obviously). Getting this all done before the Christmas holiday would be a big plus…

Here we go!