A Thesis Defense

Preparing for Defense

About a month ago I had the opportunity to go to a thesis defense.  If you’ve never experienced a thesis defense it’s basically a hearing where a panel of judges (professors) put your thesis (heavily researched paper and work) on trial.  I have been to a few of these in other places, even experienced it once myself.  When the students are well prepared, it can be an impressive display of knowledge and learning.  When the students are not prepared, it can be a seriously uncomfortable affair.  But nothing had quite prepared me for a thesis defense here on our island.

It started out very formally.  Everyone was seated, the room packed with family, friends, students and teachers there to support the presenters.  A camera man moved about making sure the event was well documented.  The four professors of the panel were introduced one by one and then the two students, (two young women who did a joint project) were introduced and told they would have thirty minutes to present their thesis.

The first presenter rose. She was dressed in her most formal island wear.  Taking a microphone in one hand and her paper in the other she stood in front of the audience and professors and read from her paper, never making eye contact or engaging with anyone.  She then proceeded to share their thesis, “The importance of encouraging e-commerce in the islands”

“E-commerce,” she began, “is very important for our island.  E-commerce will greatly help our island to increase its economic capacity.  With e-commerce we will see a bright future for the islands.  Businessmen will be able to do more business, because of e-commerce.  The benefits of e-commerce will be seen throughout the society, in education, economics, and health. E-commerce...”

And so it went, on and on, every sentence lacking any sort of substance at all.  When she had finished, there was great cheering.  Family members came and laid flower necklaces on her as her partner stood up to continue from where she left off.  If the first presenter summarized their paper, I suppose the second presenter summarized the summary of the paper, because she said more of the same glowing language without any real substance to speak of.  When she had finished there was more cheering and more flower necklaces.

Decorating the tree

But now the professor stood to speak.

“May I congratulate these students on their excellent presentation summarizing their work on this important subject of e-commerce.”  The room exploded in applause.  After a moment the professor asked for quiet before proceeding, “I said at the beginning that they would have 30 minutes to present and summarize their topic and they have achieved that in under 15 minutes!”  He said to more thunderous applause.

When things had settled down, he then began the laborious job of explaining that though he would not wish to bring shame upon anyone, it was their job as professors to ask questions so as to encourage the further advancement of knowledge, and so, they would ask some hard questions of the thesis presenters.  The audience grew quiet as the real challenge of the defense began.  Would the students be able to answer the tough questions coming their way?

“Though I do not enjoy challenging you with these questions,” the professor apologetically began, “I must make note of ways you can improve your work…  I noticed that in your table of contents you list your sections with roman numerals, only for your third section you used the number 3 rather than the roman numeral.  We must be consistent in these things.”

And so it continued. All of the questions to the students were just as superficial as the paper itself: a punctuation problem, an illustration that was not clearly labeled, a spelling mistake, etc.  Nothing of substance came from any of the professors.  As the fourth professor, the youngest of the group, finished his appraisal of their bibliographic data, he lowered his head and asked, without looking at his colleagues,

“The difficulties of infrastructure and the slow delivery of goods in our country would certainly impact the effectiveness of e-commerce. How would you address this important issue?”

The Stockings are Up

I perked up.  Finally, a substantive question.  What would they say? They’re in the hot-seat now.  The professor raised his eyes to the presenters.  I also looked their way, wondering about how they would respond.  But if they had heard the question at all, it seemed they were being careful to ignore it.  Their heads looked down at their papers as they flipped through their pages, seemingly looking for an answer?  There was a brief moment of silence as the question hung in the air.  It was clear that they had no intention of answering it.  What would happen now? I wondered.  The awkwardness was finally relieved by one of the other professors who, with a clearing of the throat, remarked on the excellence of the question and then turned our attention to the width of the margins on page six…

PRAYERS ANSWERED
The consultant checking ended well. By putting in a lot of hours, they were able to finish checking the first book! We are thankful for this accomplishment and for the team that worked so hard. We were able to have a few conversations about the too-young bride in our neighborhood. We were encouraged to hear that many of our neighbors did not approve and have spoken against it.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
We pray that more islanders would learn to think critically and be able to discuss things of substance in meaningful ways. Pray for our teammate, who has less than two weeks on the islands before going to her home country for several months. Pray that all the logistics of moving out of her house and saying her goodbyes would go well and that her interactions with island friends would be blessed.  An island sister on the small island may be taken to court by her father for her faith. Pray for strength, courage and wisdom for her and also pray for her relationships with her family. Continue to pray for the islands, the president has installed his own governor for our island after arresting the elected governor. We haven’t heard about any backlash yet, but it feels like people may just be biding their time.