{"id":163,"date":"2016-02-05T19:03:34","date_gmt":"2016-02-05T19:03:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.mun.ca\/studentblog\/?p=163"},"modified":"2016-02-05T19:03:34","modified_gmt":"2016-02-05T19:03:34","slug":"the-third-milestone-of-grad-school-the-thesis-proposal-defence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.mun.ca\/studentblog\/the-third-milestone-of-grad-school-the-thesis-proposal-defence\/","title":{"rendered":"The Third Milestone of Grad School: The Thesis Proposal Defence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blog#3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Prelude:<\/p>\n

You thought it was \u2018life or death\u2019 when you sent in your first grant application in the fall. It wasn\u2019t, life went on (1st<\/sup> Milestone). You thought you were literally going to die the last week of your first semester. You didn\u2019t, and had a wonderful winter break to forget about it. Like a mother after childbirth, you fell back in love with something that had caused you a lot of pain (2nd<\/sup> Milestone). January comes around and you sit down at your desk to plan your semester. Skipping through the pages of your agenda you see it. January 29th<\/sup>, 2016: Thesis Proposal Defense. Damn.<\/p>\n

Chapter One: Waiting<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the day I\u2019ve been dreading for all month, and I am second to present. My visual presentation is stellar and my script is on point \u2013 seamlessly flowing from one slide to the next. The only trouble is, I\u2019m scared out of my mind. The room is packed with faculty, undergrad students and my peers. I keep thinking to myself \u201cI\u2019m prepared, there\u2019s no reason why they would fail me\u201d. And then the bad nervous thoughts start to seep in: \u201cMy supervisor seems to think that I\u2019m ready, but what if she\u2019s wrong, what if I\u2019ve just been fooling her with all my exciting animated slides\u201d. I jolt back to reality when I hear \u201cNext up, Natasha Leclerc\u2026\u201d. I walk up to the podium, set my script in front of me, and whisper to myself \u201cget a grip\u201d. I look up, gulp, and then my lips started moving.<\/p>\n

Chapter Two: The Presentation<\/p>\n

I\u2019m fully aware that my body is tense and my knees keep trying to buckle underneath me. I also become fully aware of the sound of my voice. Do I really sound like that? My voice is oddly confident and I wonder if it is making up for how tense my body looks. First slide switch, clicker malfunction. Apparently I forgot how to use the clicker that I used effortlessly in my practice presentations. People giggle, but I quickly recover. My mouth is getting drier and drier. My mouth never gets this dry and I talk all the time. Damn. I take a sip of water and keep going. Soon I realize that I\u2019m on my conclusion slide. People clap loudly and I feel relief. For a second\u2026<\/p>\n

Chapter Three: Questions<\/p>\n

Oh no, please nobody raise your hand to ask me any questions. 1, 2, 3, hands go up. Damn. Questions are tough to answer especially when you feel like you just ran a marathon. I answer them all to the best of my ability with a couple comments like \u201cI don\u2019t know, but I hope to address that in my research\u201d. When there were no more questions I walked back to my seat and started to run through the entire presentation in my head, scrutinizing every stumble, every sip of water, every answer to every question, only stopping when I heard my cohort telling me that I did a good job. I\u2019m so blessed to have them in my life.<\/p>\n

Chapter Four: Deliberation<\/p>\n

We are all asked to clear the room and to stay close by for the results. We wait outside and our friends are all huddled around us congratulating us. No more than 5 minutes pass before the faculty come out and give us the thumbs up. So anticlimactic, but what was I expecting? Tyra Banks asking us all to step forward and tell us we\u2019ve made it to the next round? Or maybe Oprah to tell us \u201cYou get a pass! You get a pass! You get a pass!\u201d? Anyways, we all went to the Luxus Boutique Hotel Bar downtown for cocktails to celebrate and that made up for it.<\/p>\n

Epilogue:<\/p>\n

After a weekend of recovery I can finally say that it\u2019s over. I came, I stumbled, and I conquered. We all did. In hindsight it really wasn\u2019t that bad. While it was totally a big deal and we had good reason to take it seriously, we probably didn\u2019t need to stress out about it so much. That being said, I probably will stress out at my first conference presentation but hopefully less and with more confidence in my abilities.<\/p>\n

~Natasha<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prelude: You thought it was \u2018life or death\u2019 when you sent in your first grant application in the fall. It wasn\u2019t, life went on (1st Milestone). You thought you were literally going to die the last week of your first semester. You didn\u2019t, and had a wonderful winter break to forget about it. Like a … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-natasha-leclerc","4":"post-163","6":"format-standard","7":"category-student-blog"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.mun.ca\/studentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.mun.ca\/studentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.mun.ca\/studentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.mun.ca\/studentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.mun.ca\/studentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wp.mun.ca\/studentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167,"href":"https:\/\/wp.mun.ca\/studentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions\/167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.mun.ca\/studentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.mun.ca\/studentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.mun.ca\/studentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}