The journey to achieving your doctoral degree is a long one. You spend many hours or even years trying to convince people that you deserve a doctoral degree. The biggest deal comes when you are preparing your defense. After surpassing many obstacles in your PhD, you have to defend your dissertation before you finally have that title in front of you. Just because you have written a research project does not mean that the university will give you a degree. You will first need to make a presentation, defend it with an audience, and be reviewed by committee members. It sounds triggering and may cause anxiety. But this is the journey of every PhD student.
For many students, it is natural to be overwhelmed when they are to defend their dissertation. But this should not scare you. You need to know how to prepare for a dissertation defense.
But before we continue, we need to understand what dissertation defense is. It is relative in different universities since they all have different policies. But in general, looking at the process involves a few aspects which are the same.
- Attend presentations made by other candidates
The first thing you need to look at when preparing to defend your dissertation is to look at different schedules available in your university. You should not be bound by presentations that are only in your university. You can also attend presentations that are available in other universities. What you need to do is figure out when these events are happening and then show up.
When you attend these presentations, you will see other students defending their thesis. This exposure will help you get rid of the fear. For the more, you’ll understand how the process is and why it is necessary. Rating of this is not only about the candidate. It is also about the university.
- Prepare your PowerPoint presentation
When you up preparing for your dissertation, you need to have PowerPoint slides. Once they have submitted their final destination dissertation, most students usually think they had, but it’s over. They had a hard, hard part over. They might even relax a bit. They need to know they need to schedule a presentation so they should not be overconfident. It is easy for people to be overconfident since they think they know they are doing the one who prepared the thesis, but they need to prepare a PowerPoint slide. But it’s not as easy as you think they need to give themselves enough time to go through the dissertation defense process. The process of preparing slides that even a month before.
- Structure the slides
As you are preparing the slides for your dissertation, you need to understand what makes a high-quality slime. You have a great defense. You need to have great slides. When you attend conferences, you get to see practically other people who saw the defense PowerPoint presentation. Wanting to know one thing to note is that your slides should not be too wordy. When presenting your dissertation, the attention should be on you and not your slides.
- Practice breathing techniques
When presenting your thesis, it is essential to take your time. You need to not rush through your presentation. You need to breeze as you give your presentation and give the committee time to understand what you have written. Do you need to practice how to breeze when you are speaking? This makes you fluent in your speech?
- Make a very special intro
When presenting your thesis, there is a lot of expectation from you. Both the audience and committee members are there for your attention. This event says a lot. The committee members and the audience expect to be thrilled how you present your faces and how you expose them. How are you introduce your thesis, Will answer the question of is listening to this presentation worth my time. To get the attention. To capture both the audience and the committee members, you need to make an excellent impression fast. So however you decide to open your presentation, remember it will set the whole presentation’s tone.
- Formulate your list of questions
When preparing the presentation, you should ask yourself some questions about what kind of questions can be derived. You should try and approach the thesis from the point of view of the reader. You should ask him you do not know about the topic. After brainstorming, you cannot write down some questions.
Conclusion
When preparing for defending the thesis, yes, some other things to note, practicing your speech and body language, you should try presenting before your friends. They can ask questions when confronted with mistakes learn how to deal with them.
