The Harrowing

Well, it's official, I am now a Ph.D. candidate! It means I get to move on and continue my graduate school career. See, getting a Ph.D. is not like getting your bachelor's degree, where pretty much all you have to do is pass your classes and you get your diploma. Sometime in your second year, you have to write and present two proposals, one on your own work and where you want to go with it, and one outside your field of study. These proposals are presented to a committee of professors who are experts in the field you choose. Their job: rip your guts out and show them to you. Or at least, that's what it felt like.

Really what they're there to do is take apart your proposal and challenge you to defend it. If you handle yourself well, show that you've read a lot of background info, understand their criticisms, you get to pass, as long as there are no major problems with what you've done. Unfortunately, I had some problems. I forgot that there is a right way to ask questions in science, and a wrong way, and I did what every new scientist does and approached it the wrong way. The first thing my committee did was to point this out and re-frame my question the way it should have been asked. Then, they proceeded to point out that most of the experiments I had proposed were irrelevant to this new question. Furthermore, I had based my proposal on contradictory results from two different labs doing similar work. My committee thought it was an interesting subject, but had a quick and easy answer, one that I apparently should have seen as well.

Needless to say, I came out of this feeling pretty awful. It's never fun feeling like a stupid amateur, and it left me wondering if I even belong here in the first place. But, I don't feel that any of the criticism I received was unjustified or off the mark. It's just difficult looking at yourself through the eyes of four people who have years and years of experience and seeing all your flaws laid bare. I've felt pretty awful for the last two days, but really that's what makes it such a valuable learning experience. These are mistakes I'm not bound to make again. And I did pass the exam, on the condition that I re-write part of my proposal. Having gone through this is just going to make it that much sweeter when I finally do get that degree.