Some more questions for those who have defended.

[winterlime]

- How long was the total time set aside for your defense?
- How much of that time was presentation, and how much was question-and-answer?
- Did your committee interrupt you with questions and requests for clarification during your presentation, or were you allowed to present and then fielded all questions at the end?

Comments

[boojum42]

I think I had about 30 mins defense and about an hour of questions? It didn't really go an hour; they just set aside that long. Trying to remember how long I had for my generals paper (which might be more analagous to a masters defense)-- I think the talk was still about 30 mins honestly. They let me do the whole talk and then asked questions at the end.

The way Maryland linguistics thesis defenses tended to work was: defense talk (public, open to whoever wants to come, usually a bunch of other members of the department show up and you can invite friends if you like), public questions (open to whoever), committee questions. Then the committee wanders off to talk about you and some people go grab the cake and champagne (hopefully) while others wait with you. Then the committee comes back and says yay you passed but you have to make a bunch of corrections which we'll talk about later. Then cake. Cake with puns based on your research, often. I think at least some of these steps were quirks of Maryland's process, though.

[boojum42]

I really liked both my generals paper defense and my dissertation defense, actually. I feel like most of graduate school is a very lonely time; defenses are scary but they are also a time in which other people get together to notice you and the stuff you've done. It's scary, but it feels good.

[midnight_sidhe]

The time allotted for mine was two hours total: one hour for presentation, one hour for questions. The hour for questions was allotment rather than requirement, same as for boojum42. I talked, then the committee asked questions, then other faculty members not on my committee asked questions, and then anyone else who was there asked questions. A large chunk of my question period consisted of several faculty members tearing to shreds one of the other grad students after he asked a stupid question and continued to be oblivious that that was what he had done. I don't remember whether any faculty members interrupted me during the talk; technically they're not supposed to, but our talks were not the epitome of formality, and sometimes people did at other people's.

My master's didn't require a presentation, so I don't have anything to offer there.

[silkspinner]

I talked for about forty-five minutes and answered questions for fifteen. They were almost exclusively questions arising from audience interest -- i.e., they wanted to know more, not to poke holes in my work. (Answers included "yes, it works like this," "no, that's impossible because that," and "yep, that sure is the question i plan to work on over the summer.")

Then we had champagne and went out to lunch.