Becoming A DBA

This is another uber quick post. My plan for a full day at the library was not to be because of some personal matters. Instead I ended up squeezing in three 90 minutes stints of work in between some family duties!  The good news is that I was able to provided needed family support and now have finished all of my chapter summaries. This work was important not only so I have a easy to review summary to reference but also because I discovered some edits that I need to make. Most of the edits are typos and rephrasing, but I also discovered that that I should add one my hypothesis –ouch! It is not a huge omission but I should have caught this before, and will be prepared to speak to this at my VIVA.

Fortunately, after many phone calls and emails, I have managed to have my jury duty rescheduled to August. This along with scheduling my travel and accommodation required effort over the past week, but thankfully all of my logistics are finalized now including two mock vivas.

The not so good news is that I am behind scheduled with responding to VIVA questions! Oh well, I will need to catch up by completing some work in the evenings. I have to sign off now because this coffee shop is closing in 10 minutes!

What a week this has been! I received confirmation on my VIVA date, which, to my dismay, overlaps with the summons that I received recently for jury duty! This means that I spent several days working to understand the process and supporting documents required to get my jury duty rescheduled. I am awaiting the decision but think things should work out.

I have one more thesis chapter to summarize and then my focus will be on answering sample VIVA questions. While creating the 1-page thesis chapter summaries I have also been reflecting and documenting my views on the strengths and weaknesses of my thesis. This work will likely help with responding to the VIVA questions.

Today is going to be a short day as I am heading out for fun and frolic with my partner tonight. There is nothing like time constraints to create focus. I have one hour left and I AM going to complete the last chapter summary!

It took a lot of effort to clean up the files in my office this week. There was so much paper!! I now have all of my literature organized by thesis chapter and have identified core papers that I need to review more deeply as part of my VIVA preparation.

As I reviewed, and culled, the mounds of paper I was amazed by how much effort has been undertaken on this thesis journey. There were so many dimensions to learning key skills. For example, as I cleaned up my files I was struck by how many advisors, formal learning, and self-study was involved to develop my quantitative skill-set. At UofT and Henley there were five professors at different junctures (Doug, Walid, Oleysa, Harry, and Phil).  I also had three different tutors at different stages (a quant whiz who was completing his MBA, a PhD student, and a PhD who is a quant expert).  Finally, in addition to the Henley workshops, I completed 4  SPSS workshops and purchased 5 books, watched numerous on-line tutorials, and leveraged numerous quant sites to answer questions and reinforce my understanding. Wow!!

My other take-away from this week is that the VIVA is a big undertaking. Based on my review of the types of questions that may be asked, my sense is it is about two overlapping things at the core. First, explaining/defending the research that you have presented in your thesis. Second, showing your academic expertise by responding to questions not directly covered in your thesis. For example, who has most influenced your thinking as a researcher? The preparation is actually taking the learning and research to another level as you think and prepare which is simultaneously interesting and daunting.

The good thing about VIVA preparation is that, based on my project plan, there is at least another six weeks of very solid preparation required but the pace is reasonable.  For example, today I will likely spend about 6hours at the library instead of the 10-12hour days that I was logging in recent months. I just need to stay focused though and continue to squeeze in an additional three nights of work during the week as well. Typically one to two hours. Back to work now!