Cand. Scient.

Almost a month ago - on the 24th of March - I defended my Master's Thesis. Here's a short reflection on the thesis writing process and the examination following..


Now, I knew the paper itself was well written, but since I had never fully read any body else's thesis nor attended a thesis defence, I had a hard time judging how well my actual work was. Thinking the past six months and my efforts and results through I knew I could have performed much better, which made me nervous.

The hand-in deadline was February 15th, and at Christmas I guess I had done around 15-20% or the thesis, so January and February was pretty much a no-life experience, with work days from 9 hours on a short day and 16 hours on a long day. Dreaming about the thesis wasn't the exception but the rule in those months. But the worst part was, that feeling, that I wouldn't get around to do it as well as I could have, if only I hadn't slacked so badly the first four months.


Oral exams have never been my favourites and facing one hour in the spotlight didn't ease my nerves either. Fortunately it's always easier talking about one's own work and questions related to that, than it is at an ordinary exam. The first 30 minutes was a presentation of my thesis, and the last 30 minutes was actual examination.

At first I was a bit reluctant at having friends and family come to hear, since I thought it might just make it all worse - but in the end I figured it would be nice to have them there. Partially it made the setting less exam-like and more comfortable, and partially it gave me an audience to target my presentation to. - Not that I tried to make everything understandable for the non-computer science people, but it was easier imagining talking to a small group than to just my advisor and the examiner.

So I was preparing for what questions might arise during the examination and working on creating my presentation for the week up to the exam (an exam question was released one week before), only to find myself deciding to redo the presentation entirely on the last evening. So I spent half the night before the exam refitting subjects into slides and whispering my way through what I planned to say. On the bright side, the tiredness did actually calm my nerves a bit!


In the end everything turned out fine, as the title suggests. I got top grade (12), people seemed generally impressed with the work I had done how well my presentation went.

And just like that, from one second to the next, I was done studying and ready to look for jobs. More or less anyway :-)


If I was to give a three advices, it would be:
1) Make sure you know where you stand: Read other theses, attend as many thesis defences as possible, and talk to your advisor about grade expectations. I never did any of those three.
2) Don't worry you don't get everything perfect - at master's level you're not expected to.
3) Don't wait until last minute to do something - while it may work out fine, the process of getting it to do so is much more comfortable if you have enough time ;)

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