So, after the major nationalist kick of the Olympics, it was time to bear down and get that Candidacy Exam done. Yup, its been two-three weeks of static on the blog, and for a good reason - I've spent nearly every waking moment preparing for that exam. Long story short, I passed, and it wasn't quite as I expected.
Now, some background:
At my University, specifically my department, the Candidacy Exam structure is as follows:
1. Candidate writes a proposal and distributes it to his committee 2-3 weeks ahead of the exam date.
2. Committee exists of my supervisor, three other professors from my department, and then an external.
3. At the exam, candidate gives a 20 minute presentation, followed by 2-2.5 hours of questions. The questions can be any subject matter related to the project. Depending on your answers, you pass or fail.
So yeah, it ends up being a bit open ended in terms of what the subject matter of the questioning can be. Sure, you'll have an idea of the subject matter, specifically subjects that are tied to your project. However, that could be fairly broad, for my project, it is. The major importance of the Candidacy Exam, at least in my department, is that this is the last time that your "general knowledge" is tested. From this point in, its your work, and you're defending it. Generally speaking, its considered to be harder than a final defense, simply for that reason.
Anyways, I had been working on the documentation for my exam since early February, and managed to finish during the Olympics. I finished just over a week before we had to submit the paperwork to the committee. As you would expect, I passed the document to my supervisor, and had him give his input. In usual fashion, a week passes, and at the last moment, I get the document back from him with a bunch of changes required. I understand that he's a busy guy, essentially the poster-boy for biting off more than you can chew, but you would figure that something this important would take some priority. Oh well, this is something I'll probably never understand, since I'm just a grad student, and don't manage 10 grad students at once... >.>
In any case, my planning ahead to get things done ahead of time was totally negated by this. I suppose it happens, but still, it would have been nice to not have to continually swap between the document and the presentation. It would have been perfect to been able to work on everything in a sequential manner, but yeah, best laid plans... lol. In any case, the loss of time made things fairly hectic, moreso than they probably should have been. Everything ended up being shifted back a week, and with all things considered, I only had a few days after finalization of my presentation to study fundamentals and practice my presentation.
Its kind of ironic, after spending pretty much every waking moment working on, well, essentially my life's work at this point, how much the little pleasures in life actually mattered. The one thing that probably kept me sane was forcefully preserving the semblance of a sleeping schedule. Also, taking time, even just an hour in every, say, four hours just to switch the brain off and either watching TV or playing some video games. Just some time to let the brain rest. Heck, a good cup of coffee was a treat, but not as good of a treat as the cold Holsten Festbock I have beside the laptop.
As I got closer to the exam, my stress level rose significantly. To keep sane, I tried to keep as busy as possible by tweaking my presentation, adding equations and figures to my presentation to refer to in questioning, practicing the presentation, and studying fundamentals. I pretty much went over my 4th year of by B.Sc. and all my grad courses in three days flat. That's an insane amount of material in a very short time - all of it fair game for questions. On top of this, my presentation was over the time limit until a day before the exam. Understandably, I was exceptionally stressed.
Tuesday came around. I got a good night's sleep. I did my final prep. Then we got stuck in traffic. Awesome. Then we couldn't find a parking spot. Awesome. Then two of my examination panel was late. Awesome. Then I had a bunch of random people show up (our presentations are open). Awesome. Then one of the randoms asked a serious question about the fabrication of my device (noticed that the release of my structures wasn't very clean). Awesome. As if I needed more things to happen.
As for the presentation itself, it went very quickly. I had 20 slides to present, 20 minutes, so a minute per slide. I went through my first 5 in three minutes. Talk about adrenalin. I pulled it together, and pulled off the presentation fairly well. I did a good job of defining my project scope, and not opening myself up to a lot of stray questions. Then the two hours of questions started...
I was dreading the questions. After talking to people in my group about their exams, and people outside my group, the overwhelming problem with these exams is the questions. I did get my fair share of questions, including some that blatantly questioned the operation of my device, and rightly so. The design of my device is from the very beginning of my project. Since I'm microfabricating this, I developed a mask set, and haven't been able to deviate from that mask set. Fortunately, my exam panel realized this as well. Without going into the nitty-gritty details, the examiners were satisfied that these problems (although somewhat serious in terms of operation) were easily fixable. Essentially some design optimization that is easily accomplishable with my fabrication recipe. In the end, I ended up being surprised on how casual and non-structured the whole process was. Essentially, it felt no different than sitting down with my own research group and talking about people's projects. The input was very valuable, and some opinions were raised that I'll be taking to heart (the design revisions, etc). The major thing that surprised me was the fact that my supervisor was a non-factor in the questioning. He didn't really ask any questions, nor did he seem to have the time to talk to me after the exam (left in a hurry, fairly upset..). So, ultimately, I have no clue how he feels about the exam. Hopefully, something external to the exam was happening to distract him. I've been told by two professors in my department that I did very well, so I'm unsure of my supervisor's reaction. I'm sure I'll get an earful eventually one way or another, either in private or at my next group meeting (next Tuesday) about how I "barely passed" and was "lucky" to continue.
All speculation aside, the experience (at least to this point... lol) has been ultimately positive. I have the best grasp of my research I've ever had, period. I know where the project is going, and have a clear grasp of what's required to finish. In addition, the validation that what I've been toiling with for the last five or so years wasn't misguided or worthless, as my supervisor has, on occasion, pretty much suggested.
After it was all said and done, the relief was FANTASTIC. I slept like a baby. I got up early, sat myself down in front of my computer, relaxed, played video games while listening to Ron and Fez/Opie and Anthony all morning while casually drinking a pot of coffee. It was heaven.
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