U.S. Campus Life Almost there ... By Masako Yamada	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
迫る、博士論文発表の日 論文審査委員会に提出した原稿はこれだ！

In a little over two weeks, I will be defending my thesis. This will involve giving an hour-long presentation of my work in front of a general audience and fielding questions from a committee of five professors. The rigor of this examination depends on the university. At some universities, the thesis defense is merely a formality; at others, it's a grueling test of knowledge, a test that one can fail.

It is customary to give the thesis committee members a draft of the thesis three weeks in advance of the defense date. This is so they have ample time to read it. It is a long document, and it's not reasonable to ask busy committee members to read it in a few days.

I have just submitted the draft to my committee members, and I am feeling very relieved. The draft I submitted is about 100 pages long. It is called a draft because it still hasn't been accepted by the department and the university and won't be until after I successfully pass the defense, but for all practical purposes, I've finished writing the thesis.

I have been working very hard on my thesis for the past few weeks, often sleeping in a chair in my office until being jolted awake by one of my diligent labmates coming in at 7:30 in the morning. I must have created at least 20 new diagrams within the past few days. The computer continued to make new calculations until the day before I submitted the draft.

In principle, I should have been working steadily on my thesis over the past six years, collecting data and writing bits and pieces here and there. In practice, I didn't really start writing the thesis until very recently. I knew I had enough material to write a thesis, but I had never got around to tying everything together. I thought it would be simple enough to "cut and paste" all of my past papers and presentations together, but writing a cohesive introduction and conclusion alone took much longer than I expected.

Even minor aesthetic details have been troublesome to control. Boston University has a rather strict thesis format, and trying to fit everything on a page in the right way with correct font size, spacing, margin widths and diagram layout has been time-consuming. I still have some minor formatting details to address, but the thesis is finally done.

This does not, however, mean that I can twiddle my thumbs until the defense date. First of all, I have to prepare my seminar. Next, I have to prepare myself for the oral examination. In general, I give good seminars, but I'm bad at answering questions, so I know I will be catching up on the literature until the very end. Finally, I have to finish a few research projects I've started. I suppose one of the reasons I started so late on writing my thesis is because I've been busy trying to write some academic papers before I move to New York and my new job.

In many academic disciplines, the thesis is the crowning achievement of one's Ph.D. career, and the embodiment of one's work. This is not the case in physics. Publish or perish, they say. It's considered far superior to publish a smart, four-page paper in a widely respected journal than slave over a 100-page thesis that will languish in a university library, never to be seen, let alone read, again. It's a message I've received clearly while working in my lab, and I agree with the message: The point of scientific research is to provide results that are useful to others. By publishing in a journal, not only does one disseminate this information, one also claims ownership of the idea. If there is no audience, much of the joy and satisfaction is lost.

This is why I still have so much to do before I move to New York. My colleagues are waiting for me to complete three papers. If I don't finish them before the defense date, I will have to continue working on them after I start my new job. Although this is a bit inconvenient, it is also one of the things that makes academic work so interesting. There is always more one can do. The work is never done.

Shukan ST: Sept. 6, 2002

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