Academic rites of passage

The university is definitely a place where rites of passage are still important. (Kind of like the time I killed and ate a rattlesnake on a Boy Scout survival hike, but usually more civilized.)

For the several of you readers who are working on Ph.D.s, this post is to tell it could be worse. Or at least a lot more formal.

We were in Finland this week, me giving a seminar and Sandy catching up on work and enjoying the place. After my lectures and talks with grad students, we had an interesting chance on Saturday to watch the very Nordic style dissertation defense. This is us with Kaarle Nordenstreng in his formal outfit for presiding over the ceremony.

The dissertation was presented by a friend of ours from our trip to St. Petersburg last summer, Svetlana Pasti. She had written a very interesting dissertation on how Russian journalism has been changing with a younger, more careerist generation since the 1990s. That is her on the left in the second picture, wearing a yellow mantle sort of thing.

The process was very interesting. She presented a very formal summary. Then an invited opponent, Brian McNair from Scotland, did a very detailed critique, while she listened, standing. Then they both sat and did a long dialog of questions and answers. Very interesting, great feedback to her, but more than
a little intimidating, too.

Back in the US we have various ways nowadays to do these dissertation defenses. The evening before Svetlana's defense in Finland, Sandy participated in a UT one (an English-department student's dissertation on Middle English poetic metrics) via Skype, sitting around yelling into her laptop. Odd not to see the faces (you can't do that, apparently, on a multi-person conference call -- or at least it was beyond the UT English dept. tech support guys), but it came out okay.

I remember how informal my dissertation defense was. I sat down with the committee and one of them said, "This is good. Now let's talk about the interesting parts." It lacked drama perhaps, but was easier on the stomach lining.