The British Inquisition

On Friday, August 1st I passed my PhD defense. It was one of the most unpleasant events I have ever experienced and I am so happy I never have to do it again. Why was it not fun? Well, I do not think anyone goes into their defense full of happiness and joy, but I was not aware of how stressed I was about it until afterwards when I got home and slept for ten hours.

The defense was scheduled for 10am so I arrived around 9:15 to go over my notes and pace around. My supervisor arrived at 9:45 and we waited together until it was time to go into the conference room. The panel chair came to fetch us just after 10am and we went up to the 5th floor. I was sort of numb and not feeling my nervousness - it was an out-of-body experience. As we walked into the room, the examiners stood up, introduced themselves, shook my hand and then we all sat down. The panel chair (who looks exactly like Stephen King) went over the order of proceedings. The examiners would have specific questions first, and then it would be more of an open discussion. I am not sure exactly when the 'open discussion' happened because I certainly missed it. As soon as the chair handed over to the examiners, they fired questions continuously for two hours. I expected difficult questions. That is what the defense is all about.

Lots of the questions were testing me to see if I really did the work, so those were not hard to deal with. There were particular aspects of my work that they seemed to have problems with - mostly word and term choices, and my fundamental philosophy regarding the media and society. I expected them to zero in on what I knew were the weaknesses of my research, not stuff like that! One of the examiners comes from a sociology background and he wanted to know why I didn't reference a particular theorist that he especially likes. Umm, because I didn't use sociological theories!? He had the same question about a term I used to refer to the connection between news and society - why didn't I use the sociological term for it? These questions seemed pointless and designed to highlight my lack of knowledge, but they were still manageable. The absolute worst part of the defense was dealing with the other examiner. She had a really strong Italian accent and had the most abrupt way of speaking that most of the time I couldn't tell if she was asking me a question or making a statement. Even worse, when I answered her questions she gave no sign of even hearing what I said. No nodding or comment or disagreement - nothing! It was incredibly uncomfortable.

When they had asked all of their questions, the chair asked me to wait downstairs and he would come get me when they had made their decision. My supervisor and I left the room and as we walked to the elevator, he turned to me and said 'wow, they really gave you a grilling but you did great.' At the time I wasn't thinking of it that way, I suppose because I had no idea what to expect. Apparently my defense was quite intense compared with others he has been to. Lucky me! He also mentioned how difficult the Italian examiner was to understand and talk with. At least it wasn't just my own feeling towards her!

So we went and sat back where we had been only two hours earlier and waited. And waited. And waited. For 50 minutes. Finally the panel chair came to get us and didn't give anything away. As soon as I walked into the room the examiners were smiling and said 'congratulations' and shook my hand. I was surprised because it took them so long to make their decision I thought there must have been some disagreement between them. Maybe there was, but the panel chair read the results and they voted to pass my thesis with nine changes. As he was reading I kept thinking, nine changes seems like a lot, how could it pass? I felt confused. The examiners had been unpleasant, especially the Italian woman, and now they were smiling at me. But I also had to make changes or 'final polishing' as the panel chair phrased it. Several of the things they wanted me to change were pointless and would not improve my work. It was all so odd. During the interrogation they acted like they hated my work and now it just needed 'polishing'? After that, they congratulated me again and I left.

R met me downstairs and from my facial expression he surely must have thought I had failed. Indeed, I felt like I had failed for some reason. Even though I was granted the PhD and can use the 'Dr.' in front of my name, it did not (and still does not) feel like an achievement. It feels more like I survived a horrible hazing ritual to get into an exclusive secret society. A couple of weeks ago I read somewhere that the post-defense reaction is typically similar to post-natal depression, and I can understand that now. Maybe it is simply recovering from the intense stress of the situation which had been building from the moment I finished writing. Or maybe it is the realization that the huge amount of time and effort spent researching and writing the thesis, preparing for the defense, getting through the defense, and making the necessary changes is all to gain entry into a club that I am not convinced I want to belong to.

~K