Thesis Title Defended

It has been a while since my last update. Actually, I have been so busy with the finals week that I barely had any sleep at all. But in the end, it was all worth it.

Let me share a brief overview of the days leading up to the pre-oral defense and the day of pre-oral defense.

2 weeks before

At this point, our group was already done with the manuscript. That is until another consultation was done due to a free time in an expert's schedule. This gave us the opportunity to speak with one of the would-be panelist so we did not let the chance slid by.

In truth, only a few members of our group managed to attend due to the suddenness of the announcement. Thankfully, we were able to still go because his insights were valuable to the improvement of our manuscript.

It is already a bit late for revisions but we still did our best to try and make it work. I spent many days where I would sleep at 3:00 AM then wake up at 7:30 AM. Those were not the pleasant days. But I still did my best to squeezed it in my tight schedule.

A week before

The week leading up to the pre-oral defense was very stressful. I actually struggled a lot with keeping my temper in check when my groupmates do not work as fast or as good as I wanted them to. I know we are all overwhelmed because the hell week coincides with the preparation for defense but I was feeling a bit bitter because they have time to review and to rest while my time has been taken up by revisions of thesis.

Thankfully, our group managed to survive the preparations without major arguments. It is extremely lucky since many groups in our batch are already having fights within their group. It is a good thing that our group consists of some of the most chill people so even when we are feeling the pressure, we are still able to laugh about it.

Additionally, instead of having uninterrupted dry runs, our group was busy with handling the things to be used for the defense like mic, speakers, and projectors. It was irritating because the other groups have all the time ti prepare while we do not have that luxury.

Day of pre-oral defense

The day started too early for me as I am an assistant leader which meant that I had to be at the university by 6:00 AM because we still need to set up the room for the defense. It was frustrating because the other group leaders and assistant leaders did not go to school at the expected time which meant that the workload piled up and our whole block had to pick up the slack of the other blocks. It seemed to us that those students only cared bout getting throughthe thesis without caring about anything else.

As the opening remarks ended, me and our group leader was able to meet with the other group members. The group leader to be assigned next semester led a morning prayer to prepare us for the defense. Then we did a bit of refresher to ensure that we all have the information we need.

When the time came for our group to present, we were nervous because we lack preparation and we know it. We even had to cut our presentation short because of the time limit. There were good suggestions given by the panelists. And much to our surprise, it was not as bad as we thought it would be. The panelists did not call us individually to be heavily questioned. What happened was more of a consultation than a defense since the panelists gave lots of recommendations on what part we should focus on for the next semester.

I think it is a bit expected that they will not be so serious since it is just a pre-oral defense for now. But I am glad that we were able to get it over with.

After defense

After our group presentation, we ate lunch as a group. I treated our group to lunch since I just got my stipend and I also wanted to say thank you to them. Not because I did not have any contribution to the group, I am actually one of the major contibutor to our paper, but I treat them to lunch because I did not want them to think that I harbor any ill feelings towards the difference in our work ethics.

Despite the fact that our group does not meet as much as the other groups, I have grown rather fond of them. I am actually looking forward to learning how to build the prototype of our project because when our group was together, we just can not stop laughing.

Our thesis title was approved with minor revisions to be added to the manuscript. I can say that it was a great thing because other groups were given a new title to work on because the panelists did not approve of their first titles.

Closing words

Being a 4th year student is a lot more tiring than I expected. I expected it to be difficult but I am still surprised at how much I did struggle with the amount of work to be done. It came to the point that even when I do have free time, I did not want to write an article here because I would rather spend it resting. It is only now that I managed to finish an article. I do have a lot of articles in drafts but they are unfinished because I ran out of energy halfway through writing them.

I still make no promises on regular updates in this account since I have to work on crochet orders that piled up, but hopefully, I will be able to interact with everyone again.