I am the student speaker at my grad school's hooding ceremony. I was very honored when the Dean asked me! I am more nervous about this than I was about my PhD defense though?! I mean you work on something for 4 to a million years to get your PhD, so it makes sense that putting together a defense presentation should not be too overwhelming. Especially when you have spent a few months writing, you are so into your research that it seemed natural for me to put it all together. (That's not to say it was not time consuming to put together my PhD defense!) Also, in the sciences, I am used to putting together a powerpoint with pretty pictures with which to distract the audience...
Talking to all the PhD recipients, their family and friends, and the faculty, administration, and guests of the grad school though? That is intimidating. My goal for this weekend was to brainstorm and start a draft. So far? Nothing. In my defense I am all stuffed up and CF and I wandered around my town for a couple hours and went for a hike yesterday, but still. This is important?!
I have a phone appointment with a tutor of sorts at my grad institution on Tuesday. I really want to get her something by tomorrow so she can see how desperately I need help. :-)
I don't know if I should search for some cheesy quote to use? Should I make it sciencey at all? How can I say something generally applicable without being boring??? I am thinking about starting off pointing out how much more nerve wracking it is to come up with something meaningful and/or inspirational for such a diverse, intelligent, and themselves inspiring group of fellow newly minted PhDs. At least maybe then they'll all give me a break.
ACK!
7 comments:
I'm guessing by this point they are all sciencied out. I'm thinking maybe a dance routine and some comedy will have them all in stitches!
Ron, yeah I wasn't thinking sciency-sciency. Maybe an interpretive dance of grad school? That could work...
Ohhh.... love interpretive dance!! I would have them turn out the lights and you could have all sorts of blinking reflective lights attached to your dance outfit!!! LOL....
Congrats! That's really cool! (What color are your robes?)
Can you just recycle your high school speech? :)
Carolyn, I'll be wearing black instead of investing the several hundred dollars into the blue and brown robe for now. I also considered going back to my hs speech and just looked for it. I don't have it, but I am writing a bit about it as I brainstorm. :-D
I recently looked into buying the fancy robes for our school and not only are they sort of ugly but the total cost was going to be $800. Since the grad school gave us our gown, hat and hood. I decided not to upgrade after all. I may still buy the poofy hat. It is only $80.
As for the speech, I don't really have any great suggestions. Ours was joint with the medical students (I don't know if yours is or not)?? So the main issue I saw was that the speeches were all about going off and treating patients and examples of medical school challenges.
I think it is nice at a graduation to recognize how difficult the process can be. Lots of ups and downs. Examples of some of the moments that were ups and some generic downs might be nice.
Ex to me for ups: the day you pass your prelims (if this exists in all disciplines), the day you schedule your thesis defense, the day you send your thesis to the printer/copier.
The downs are too many to list: spending months banging your head against a wall and not feeling like you are moving forward, people asking you if you'll finish by some date that is two years prior to the average (although this might hurt the feelings of family members), any sort of rejection of grants/manuscripts...
Danielle, after talking to someone, I am totally rewriting what I have started to focus on the shared challenges we had as doctoral students. I should have checked with you first! Luckily, my hooding ceremony is the day before the BIG university one and is just my grad school, though it includes students across the humanities and sciences.
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