Get plenty of sleep, keep your diet in check, and take care of yourself
This might be the most difficult thing for
anyone. I struggled with this the most while writing my thesis. Skipping meals,
late nights, overloading your system with caffeine just to stay awake. You have
to fight it the best that you can. A month before my defense talk, I hit the
gym 3x a week (for the first time in months). Everyone handles the anxiety of
their defense talk differently. I am someone who thinks about it constantly. So
it becomes hard to focus on other things, like taking care of yourself.
Once your thesis is turned in to your committee
members, during those final two weeks- sleep and a proper diet are KEY. The day
of your defense, make sure you are well-rested (don’t stay up all night
stressing about it) and eat well. Don’t sell yourself short. By taking care of
yourself, you ensure that you have the highest probability for giving a great
thesis defense talk and showing your committee members that you are confident
about your project.
Keep your cool and relax
When your defense day comes, you have to
remember that you have put in a lot of HARD WORK to get to this point. You know your topic
better than anyone. Because of this, you have no reason to be
stressed out.
When your committee pushes you and asks you
questions, they again will push you to your limits. You will meet a point where
you won’t know the answer. Also, a question could simply be a future
direction/experiment that you simply haven’t tested yet. Remember that they are
simply trying to test your knowledge and humble you. You don’t have to know all
the answers. Therefore, when you are answering questions, keep your cool and
relax. Answer the questions the best that you can and you should have no
problem passing. And in all honesty, the prelim (or qualifying exam) was much
harder than the actual defense…
Don’t focus on the after-party until you have actually reached the after-party
Who doesn’t want to spend their final two weeks
planning the celebration? Although I did have an after-party, I did not go to
great efforts to plan it like a wedding party. As I said in , prioritize and
focus on your thesis defense talk and nothing else. Plan your after-party while
you are on break from your practice talk/preparing for questions/working on
slides but do not make it a number one priority. Once you have passed, then you
can change your focus. The feeling is indescribable.
Have a good structure
A good thesis talk also has a good introduction
before going on to the next idea or slide. It should flow in a logical manner
and be smooth. That is why #1 is important, because many people don’t spend
enough time in the creation of good powerpoint slides. Your slides and talk have
to MATCH up, meaning you can’t have really good slides and a
mediocre talk (or vice versa) if you want it to go well.
This is why practice is important, and if you
spend enough time on BOTH the talk/slides you will give a very good talk. A lot
of times while I was actually practicing my talk, I had to go back and change
the order/wording of slides or how I introduced certain slides (the wording) so
that the flow would be better.
Be formal in how you word things (i.e. say “our
data show that”… vs. “you see here that”…). To give a good introduction, it
might be wise to use slides that ask a question in between. This question slide
(break) in-between your next idea allows for your general audience to
CATCH UP and understand your logic. Why are you doing this
experiment? If you just show a bunch of your published data with no
introduction (and maybe a title that gives an interpretation/punchline), you
will overwhelm and bore your audience.
Many
scientists forget that although they are an expert on their topic, what seems
easy and understandable to them-does not apply to others outside of their field.
Before you go to your next data slides
introduce the idea (based on this data I wanted to ask this question). Then
tell them WHY you performed this particular experiment (which is basically in
the form of a question). Once your audience understands why, go on to the next
slide and give them your interpretation. In other words, don’t just jump to the
interpretation. This will keep your audience’s attention and
make sure that your thesis defense talk gets a lot of positive feedback and
leaves a good impression on your committee members (it really does show).
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