Yesterday afternoon I passed my comprehensive exam and successfully defended my dissertation proposal. Which means I am now officially a PhD candidate. The immediate effect of this is that I can register for dissertation hours; rack up 12 of them and I’m done. I’m beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The more immediate effect is that I need to refine my research topic over the next 6 weeks and then come to agreement with my committee on exactly what my research will focus on. I’ve heard the dissertation proposal described as “what you think you will do your research on.” Apparently I’m living that very early in the process. An issue I’ve been struggling with for several years now is how to scope the research — how much is too much vs. how much is too little? I guess I still haven’t figured that part out.

But for the next couple of days that just doesn’t matter. For now, I’m going to relax and enjoy the fact that I passed.

A very busy week or so. After finally finding a committee replacement I’ve had to coordinate a proposal defense and comprehensive exam before the semester gets started. My advisor was out of town until last Friday, there was a holiday Monday, then an ice storm closed school on Tuesday. Through the magic of e-mail I was able to coordinate a time for the defense and exam, but reserving a room and getting a chance to discuss all of this with my advisor one last time was difficult.

Thankfully, all of the pieces fell into place yesterday afternoon — the graduate student office was able to find me a room, my advisor was in and had generally positive things to say about my presentation, and I even got to meet the fourth member of my committee face-to-face. Even better, my dissertation group was kind enough to put me through the wringer last night and help make sure my presentation was ready to go.

Now I just need to finish the updates and do a few more rehearsals before my defense at 1:30 today. No rest for the weary.

This morning I heard back from a potential committee member, and he graciously agreed to serve on my committee with a proposal defense date before the end of January. At last, I have a full committee again and I am back on track to take my comps before the start of the spring semester.

Of course, the down side is that I have to hit the books hard and make sure I can pass the exam, as well as put together a brief for my proposal defense. I guess every silver lining has its cloud. But I am grateful I have found a fourth committee member at such a late date.

I continue trying to find a replacement committee member. So far, the couple I have been able to contact haven’t been able to support a proposal defense before the end of January. I’ve still got a few possible candidates, but I’m waiting to hear back from one in particular that was recommended by the department chair. I think going with the department head’s suggestion is probably a good idea if its possible.

In the meantime, the clock continues to count down to the start of the semester. If I don’t find someone by the middle of next week I’m afraid I’ll need to start work on a second extension on my advancement to candidacy.

I had a brief scare toward the end of last semester. I had not heard back from my advisor about the suitability of my latest proposal draft. I went to see him to ask him to sign the papers for a second extension (decidedly NOT a good thing) and he seemed surprised adn told me my proposal was ready for my committee and I should look to schedule my comprehensive exam and proposal defense. That solved one problem, sort of. Luckily the wonderful folks in the graduate student office said that if I could defend by the start of teh spring semester I could avoid the pain of a second extension.

At which point one of my committee members had to withdraw because of scheduling conflicts. So ever since the 15th of December or so I’ve been scrambling to find a new committee member, as well as study for my comps on the assumption that my committee members will be content with my proposal as is and will accept my reading list. My advisor is out of town until the 14th, so I’m pretty much on my own. Based on his recommendation, I’ve asked the CS Department chair to sit on my committee based on his own research but I have not heard back from him yet. But it’s only two days after New Year’s, so I’m still optimistic.

I had not posted anything for a while pending comments from my advisor on the latest draft of my dissertation proposal. I got his comments back, and they were generally positive. that’s the good news. The bad news is, it has too much 0f a “development” flavor and not enough of a “research” flavor. I guess that’s a side effect of years in the commercial sector, where we spend more time just doing things instead of doing pure research.

So, it needs a re-write to recast that. It shouldn’t be too bad, mostly a “change happy-to-glad and small-dog-to-puppy” sort of thing. But it’s still a fair bit of work. But I am beginning to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

I’m a little late getting back to this. I met with my advisor a few weeks ago to redefine my research topic. It’s still within the same general area (composing services into workflows), but it’s more tightly scoped. Given how late in the semester it is already, I’m concentrated on re-writing my proposal right now. All in all, I feel a little better about the redefined topic; I think it will be easier to produce something workable, even if it wouldn’t be quite as cool as my original idea.

As the Spring 2010 semester was winding down my adviser informed me my topic was well-formed enough to finish up my dissertation proposal and move forward toward my advancement to candidacy. I scrambled to try and get the pieces into place: I found professors willing to sit on my committee, drafted a proposed reading list for my comprehensive exam, and prepared to defend my proposal. With all of the other priorities that come at graduation time, I wasn’t able to get everything into place before the end of the semester. Given that I’ve been in school since Fall 2004, I had to file a request for an extension on my advance to candidacy, which was approved.

I had high hopes that I could present my tentatively approved proposal and reading list to my committee at the start of the fall semester and complete my defense and my comps early enough to switch my hours from “dissertation proposal” hours to “dissertation research” hours. In mid August I was finally able to schedule a meeting with my adviser to review my proposal and reading list on August 24th.

Had a third party been sitting in on the meeting, it would not have been apparent that in the spring I had been close to defending my proposal. My adviser seemed surprised I was there, and appeared to have little to no recollection of what we had repeatedly discussed in the spring, to the point where he did not recall that I had a draft proposal (previously approved by him) and reading list (also previously approved by him).

When all was said and done, it was a pretty demoralizing meeting. At this point, I think there is no hope of completing my comps and defense by mid September (the last date I can switch hours is the 15th). So I have re-focused on the hope that I can get them scheduled by the end of September and completed within October.At his request, I sent my adviser a copy of my proposal, my proposed reading list, and a one-page summary of the research I did over the summer. I got him the proposal on Tuesday night and the other items on Wednesday. I still haven’t received so much as an acknowledgment he has received them.

Given how difficult it is to get my adviser to reply to e-mails and send substantive comments on anything I send him (or discuss with him in person), I am only cautiously optimistic. In fact, I am so pessimistic that I am quietly beginning to explore the possibility of switching advisers, which is probably very difficult to do  at this late date.

So, pending some feedback from my adviser, I am doing very little on my research. I’m spending my time enjoying the company of my family, doing some chores around the house I neglected in favor of my research all summer, and looking into the research interests of other professors as potential fallback advisers. It’s beginning to look like this semester could get ugly.

But sometimes I wish I could.

My adviser has been working on a proposal for the past couple of weeks, and I know that can mean a lot of lost sleep and a fried brain, so I’ll cut him some slack. But I would feel a whole lot better if I had the impression he remembered SOMETHING about what we discussed last semester regarding my research. It appears my hopes of defending my dissertation proposal and taking my comprehensive exam in time to register for dissertation research hours (as opposed to dissertation proposal hours) have been dashed. At this point, defending my proposal before the end of the semester is the imperative. Defending it before October would be ideal. If I can’t at least get it scheduled for early October it may be time to find an adviser who is more engaged.

So, instead of working on my research, I spent the evening on yet another update to my proposal that I just sent to my adviser in hopes that I will get some good feedback on this latest version. Ideally, I will get assurance that I finally have a proposal that is ready to defend. Whether my reading list is adequate still remains to be seen.

Like the song says, some days you’re the windshield and some days you’re the bug. I hate being the bug.