Poster Post Mortem
The three hours were well utilised. Spent quite a fair bit of time going through my research content not just with my assessors, but also with other people who displayed interest in the title of my poster. I am glad it generated a little attention. I guess having a straight forward title and doing neural stem cell research makes it little more captivating to read. I would like to think that somehow, the poster design also contributed to the interest too :P (although as I mentioned it could be improved upon).
I left the place in a complete daze, as testified by
geroithe. I honestly had no idea how well I fared. Compared to my peers who seemed to only speak with their examiners for little more than 15 min, I spent more than a good half hour with each one of them. Also because the last one came rather late, I ended being one of the latest few to leave.
The first assessor was generally fine, although he challenged my methods, which I still disagree with. The second one that came along was the one I was bracing myself for. I knew he knew my stuff, and I threaded lightly around him. He asked weird questions I did not understand, and I panicked a bit. He pointed out that for one of my citations, the paper was actually retracted because they realised the results could not be replicated (yes it happens). But good thing I salvaged the situation by mentioning the results of another article that still supported the point I was trying to drive across, after a long recollection time no less. In the end, I was asked to account for whether the results are considered positive or optimistic considering at higher concentrations, effects seem to dwindle. This was when I actually quoted the results of two of his published papers with rather different (if not slightly conflicting) end results. Yes I already checked him out and sized him up. I think he was kind of amused.
Oh well...
I left the place in a complete daze, as testified by
geroithe. I honestly had no idea how well I fared. Compared to my peers who seemed to only speak with their examiners for little more than 15 min, I spent more than a good half hour with each one of them. Also because the last one came rather late, I ended being one of the latest few to leave.
The first assessor was generally fine, although he challenged my methods, which I still disagree with. The second one that came along was the one I was bracing myself for. I knew he knew my stuff, and I threaded lightly around him. He asked weird questions I did not understand, and I panicked a bit. He pointed out that for one of my citations, the paper was actually retracted because they realised the results could not be replicated (yes it happens). But good thing I salvaged the situation by mentioning the results of another article that still supported the point I was trying to drive across, after a long recollection time no less. In the end, I was asked to account for whether the results are considered positive or optimistic considering at higher concentrations, effects seem to dwindle. This was when I actually quoted the results of two of his published papers with rather different (if not slightly conflicting) end results. Yes I already checked him out and sized him up. I think he was kind of amused.
Oh well...