it’s over
My defense aka proposal evaluation has ended earlier this morning and as expected I got a lot of corrections. It’s fine, that means they’re really helpful especially my adviser and a former professor during my early years in grad school. Heck, everyone was helpful even the dean. They also suggested to ask a copy of another student’s proposal (who also turns out to be my classmate and friend in grad school) because his proposal was so organized. In reality, Ram is very much obsessive compulsive with almost anything. But it pays. And thankfully, he was okay with lending me his copy.
Like I would plagiarize his work, we’re working on two different topics. His thesis deals with solid waste management, mine is carbon stock of Chinese bamboo.
I got two weeks to revise my proposal and if all their suggestions were incorporated in the final copy then I’m ready to start working on gathering data.
Everything has been revised including the study sites. On the bright side, the four studies had become two and they’re on the extreme side Like one site is in an extremely polluted area and the other is on an extremely isolated, non-polluted area).
Earlier during the evaluation one of the panel members was late and had given a completely different feedback, which made me and my adviser look at one another. It turned out that she was commenting on an instructor’s dissertation when the dean immediately recognized the term ‘headwater’ (while I was racking my brain on what the heck it was). In her rush to be on the defense venue, she grabbed the wrong paper. We ended up laughing aloud (including the panel member herself) which broke the tension in the room and relaxed me a bit (I was nervous).
My adviser reassured me later that I shouldn’t feel bad for receiving so many feedback, I told her I’m not I’m just relieved that it was over. It has been a month overdue and I nearly lost hope of the chance that it would even happen. But now, it’s done. That also means bye-bye Sims 2 and 3 for now. I guess that’s a good thing too since I started getting sick of playing Sims everyday.