"Dr. Diego". That honestly sounds weird to me, but it was on one of the emails I got today.

Backing up. :)

In a slightly out-of-the-blue way (like this entry), it finally happened, I defended my thesis this morning (the Viva, or Viva Voce).

I passed!

With comments, that is.

That means that the examiners give me a report with bufixes and I re-submit version 1.01 when I'm done (estimate is a couple of weeks). Changes are generally details, like whether a certain function is an automorphism or has to satisfy less restrictive conditions, and one slightly bigger where I misplaced a particular section (as well as mucking it a bit), completely breaking the flow of the explanation, making it pretty difficult to follow. One or two examples missing. Things like that.

Since we had rescheduled it some three times by now, I didn't want to get my hopes up, but on Wednesday it was pretty much confirmed (with final confirmation last night). Two years to do it. One year (almost) to defend it. In terms of defense-wait/thesis-work ratio it's gotta be some kind of record. :)

I actually didn't know what to expect. A Viva here is quite the unstructured affair. It turned out to be a two-and-a-half hour grilling that went through all of the work. I did have in mind what parts might be more contentious or require discussion, but I was wrong, most of the conversation centered in areas other than those I thought.

But nearing the end, a feeling of exhilaration had started to build up. Big ideas being discussed matter-of-factly, formulas bandied about. Strong arguments. Not just of one or two points on a ten-page paper, but of an entire body of work, its assumptions, its implications. What science is really about. Of course, the day-to-day grind is still necessary, but this was unexpectedly refreshing.

Now for a bit of downtime. I've been pretty much offline the past few days, too busy between work (new version of share coming next week) and the thesis.

Tired, but happy. :)

Categories: personal
Posted by diego on August 13 2004 at 8:23 PM