so, that happened (thesis defense)

[PlantinMoretus]

This is re: a master's thesis.

Advisor and I agree earlier this year on my topic, methods and yadda.  Along the way advisor is very hands-off, and pretty much approves whatever I do, with just superficial edits, comments, etc.  Tells me I'm ready to defend.

At the defense, suddenly I'm hearing about all these problems with my methods.  The second reader and chair have big concerns.  (Valid ones, I might add.  Stuff I was sorta aware of and was surprised my advisor said nothing about.  But hey, he approved it.)  Then my advisor starts chiming in.  I was not prepared to hear at that stage that there were so many problems.  Hell a couple weeks before my advisor was talking about re-working the thesis into a publication.  So I stumbled badly over that part of the discussion.

The final decision was "pass with minor revisions" which is the norm for my program.  From past students I never heard any defense stories like mine.  Usually they say their defense was fairly relaxed.  So I feel like crap!

Looking back, what should I have done differently?  I mean, it would be weird to challenge your advisor's approval of your work, so I don't know what I should have done.

 

 

[rising_star]

Man, my MA thesis defense has a similar-ish story though not quite the same as this. What I learned something like 7 years later was that the fight that happened wasn't really about me or my project but an interpersonal and departmental conflict playing out between the faculty on my committee. I literally had someone who I'd repeatedly asked what I should do to address certain things never give me a straight answer in their office and then hammer me about not clearly addressing that in my thesis. But, it was also this year when I found out why that happened and learned it was never about me or my project. 

In general, I would say don't worry too much about it. If you had serious concerns about your methods, it might've been a good idea to discuss those with your entire committee at a meeting so you could write down what they said, then send it back to them in an email noting what has been agreed to. That's maybe the only thing you could've done differently and even that might not have changed the outcome.

[EdNeuroGrl]

I second the above. It often turns out to be not about you at all. It is really unfortunate that students who are doing their best get caught in this sort of crossfire.

One thing that I have made a habit of doing, regardless of the project is to make sure everyone who is collaborating on the project is on the same page. In the above case I may have gone to the other members to get more feedback.

I have also often had to ask mentors to please be as harsh as they can with their feedback when I ask for it. This is a personal decision because I have been known to miss the subtle hints people make about all sorts of things, so I try to set up times where I have encouraged people giving me feedback to be very blunt and critical. I see it as an opportunity to change before the final presentation. I know that most people are hesitant to be critical to spare others feelings, but I do what I can to front-load the processes so the final product is something everyone is happier with. I know that strategy isn't going to be useful for all advisers nor with all students (my guess is that not too many people are quite as skilled as myself at missing the point), but it is how I  try to prevent this sort of thing. 

As a fan of being direct (which isn't good for everyone) I would strongly consider asking my adviser for feedback on how you could have prepared better. Bear in mind that you'd need to frame it as a looking forward to help you do better in the future, not in a way that sounds like you are ruminating or complaining about what happened. And some profs would really dislike a student doing this so... something to consider carefully before actually doing.

As rising_star said, however, it is entirely possible that nothing you would have done differently would have actually changed how it played out.

[PlantinMoretus]

Hmmmm....for some reason my program doesn't have committees for theses.  It's just you and your advisor until the thing is done.  The second reader and Chair get like a week to review your work before the defense.   That is very late to find out there are problems.  My advisor has only been with the uni for a few years, the second reader is very new (like only joined the uni a year ago) and the Chair has been there for over a decade.  So it's quite possible that they are not all in agreement about the standards etc for theses, and sort of discovered that at my defense.  My advisor was left to his own devices and he left me to my own devices and yeah, bit of a recipe for disaster. 

Ugh.  Not a great feeling.

[TakeruK]

Not a great feeling indeed and I sympathize! But as others said, it's not just about you---I really think you are just the unfortunate "test case" where these conflicts/confusions come into play for the first time. Hopefully, the department will learn from this and update their protocols so that everyone can understand them more clearly.

My Masters defense was the same setup (maybe it's a Canadian thing?) where there's no committee until ~2 weeks prior to the defense. There's a second reader, an extra person from inside or outside of the department and the Department Chair (who doesn't vote, probably doesn't even read the thesis [got no comments from them] and just conducts proceedings because they sit on every student's committee).

And, I just want to say that for things like thesis defenses, candidacy exams, and qualifying exams, there is a reason why we don't get a letter grade. A pass (with minor revisions) that comes smoothly or comes after an argument between two faculty members means exactly the same thing in the end. And I think this is a good thing, because academic freedom should mean that academics who disagree should be able to disagree freely and passionately and if they turn out to be wrong, this should have no impact on the student's result. That is, I would prefer a world where your example could happen than a world where work is not challenged because even if there is a hint of disagreement between the second reader and the advisor, the student would fail. 

In the rest of academia, most results are binary. You either did it, or you didn't (e.g. paper peer review, grants, fellowships, job offers etc.). I wouldn't dwell too much on what actually happened in the defense because of the reasons above. A pass with revisions is a pass, no matter what happened in the defense! Congratulations!!

[St Andrews Lynx]

I don't think that there is much you could have done, so I wouldn't beat yourself up about it. Sometimes a committee can really grill you...but still be happy with what you've done. Or they can be nice...and privately think your work is kinda sloppy. What matters most is the end result - you passed, so that's great.

It also might be that what you were hearing as strong criticism/major problems weren't actually meant to be that bad: it's sometimes hard to tell with academics. 

[PlantinMoretus]

Thanks TakerUK - it'd definitely be worse if I failed as a result of all this!

Thanks to everyone for their comments, I feel a bit better now.

Later on, when I've calmed down, I might comment to the director that having some form of second opinion much earlier in the process would be very helpful.

[dr. t]

I might comment to the director that having some form of second opinion much earlier in the process would be very helpful.

Don't. It might make you feel better, but you gain nothing by it, and it may cost you.

[TakeruK]

I also don't think it's a good idea to offer that critique to the director unless the department does some sort of survey or otherwise solicits feedback from their students/alumni. My department did this once per year so that would be an appropriate time. But as telkanuru say, giving unsolicited feedback like that will help no one and it can hurt you. As I said above, in Canadian Masters programs, it is the norm that we do not have Masters thesis advising committees. Also, I would be wiling to bet that from the director's point of view, they did not see anything wrong because the end result is that you passed, like everyone else. Hopefully your own advisor will learn something from the experience and adapt to the department culture for future students.

Also remember that, as graduate students, our perspective and experience could be a lot different than the faculty's. For example, academics tend to like picking one problem and then intensely and deeply discuss it. We should remember that the intensity of the discussion is not proportional to the importance of the issue at hand. Some people call it the "Bike Shed Effect". I see this happen a lot when people that are not deeply connected to the research problem evaluate or discuss something. It is often targeted at the methods (like in your case) because methods is usually a common link. I've seen people deeply debate two similar methods for estimating error bars on some dataset when it really turns out the difference is actually minimal and has no effect at all on the conclusions of the work. 

But I think this is a good thing (the time waste is bad but the openness to discussion is good). It is important for researchers to be able to discuss small details without losing sight of the big picture. It's okay for you to have stumbled on that part of the defense. It's okay that perhaps you and your advisor didn't choose the best possible method to do your research. In reality, all researchers often choose less ideal methods because of restrictions like time, funding, equipment availability etc. We make do with the best we can. There is no such thing as perfection in research--you could have always done better. Ultimately, your committee decided that you completed a decent enough job to pass and get a Masters and that's the only thing that matters. 

My current program's qualifying exam is a 3 hour oral exam about your first year research. The point of this exam is to find the extent of your knowledge, so every single line of questioning will have followup questions until the student is unable to answer them. So, from the student point of view, everyone feels like they did terrible, because every line of questioning stumped them. We feel this way even though we are briefed and coached through the exam process by faculty and older students and we know this will happen. What I am saying is that it is normal in academia to be challenged to the very extent of your knowledge and not be able to answer things. This is fine. This is not related to your ability to do research and it is certainly not related to the committee's impression of your abilities! After all, in academia, we are trying to push the boundaries of human knowledge and we can't do that if we ourselves are not challenged to the limits of our own knowledge.

[PlantinMoretus]

 The program director teaches the class I have this afternoon and I planned to interrupt him and talk about this in front of everyone.

[St Andrews Lynx]

Don't. 

 The program director teaches the class I have this afternoon and I planned to interrupt him and talk about this in front of everyone.

[EdNeuroGrl]

 The program director teaches the class I have this afternoon and I planned to interrupt him and talk about this in front of everyone.

That is a very very bad idea

[fuzzylogician]

 The program director teaches the class I have this afternoon and I planned to interrupt him and talk about this in front of everyone.

Don't offer unsolicited feedback. There is nothing for you to gain and there is potential of harming yourself. Don't do it in private, and absolutely do not do it in public. Interrupting class to offer your criticism of your program's defense process has about zero chance of going over well.* If you need to vent, go out with some friends who are not from your programs and complain all you want. If you really want to bring about change, you might be able to work it into a conversation with your advisor, preferably by having the conversation started by your advisor and naturally evolve in that direction. I do not recommend doing this, however. Before you do anything, take a cooling off period. I understand you're upset, but as others have noted, there is probably more going on here and it's not about you. The politics are most likely way above your pay grade and not something you can fix by providing feedback to your committee.

 

*If you've ever TAed for a class, imagine a student coming up to the professor after the final exam and complaining about how the exam was structured or the questions were worded. How would that feedback be received? How about if the student brought it up in the middle of class? 

[rising_star]

 The program director teaches the class I have this afternoon and I planned to interrupt him and talk about this in front of everyone.

I am way too late to this but I really hope you didn't do this. Either way, let us know what's going on. I really do want this to work out for the best for you!

[dr. t]

Sarcasm and levity are difficult to convey in text.

 

I hope.

[GGeorgian]

I can completely understand how to be in your shoes right now. Had the same situation for my second defense of thesis (we have 3 defenses, each on every semester).

Supervisor kindly approved all the stuff I did. what's so important she didn't even have any corrections for the theoretical model that I made with her help. but on the defense it went completely wrong. I received a lot of comments about the problems that I didn't even expect, even though I spend a lot of trying to improve my previous defense's mark to the highest. even though of this, I can't complain about her as she is really helpful, but don't know why we missed so many stuffs for my second part.

Actually, it spoiled my average point of overall master, but nothing can be done. I am trying to be more skeptical about my final version of paper now while discussing it with her.