September 2023

A PhD Candidacy Postmortem

I wrote this post in the summer of 2022 and a lot has changed since then! While it is still a useful primer for getting a general overview of what candidacy can look like, it doesn’t provide more granular, experiential details.

Now that I am a PhD Candidate, I want to tell my story and answer questions I have been asked by eager PhD students.

*I will reference the candidacy exam as the “A-Exam” as that is the terminology of my university.

From Student to Candidate

Before We Start

Okay, a few things I should explain before diving into the narrative below. The following statements pertain to the requirements/norms of my department. My committee is comprised of three members: a chair (in my field)l, a co-chair (in my field), and a minor member (outside my field). Candidacy exams comprise a one hour talk open to the public, a private Q&A with only the committee members (30-90 minutes), and a final deliberation of only the committee members. The content of my materials are defined by one task for each committee member which is mostly free form, such as publishable papers, a syllabus, a grant application, a literature review, etc. I will refer to my candidacy materials as: materials, documents, or questions.

Beginnings

The first conversation I had with my committee about candidacy was the Spring of my second year. In my program, it is required that candidacy be completed by the end of the third-year, so I thought it appropriate to bring this question up. To be honest, the answers weren’t particularly helpful. The response I got was “You should go watch others A-Exams.”

So, I did.

Then I realized that there was no uniformity. There were different tasks, different timelines, different compositions, and different presentations formats. While unique to my field, a mash-up of traditional models and purely performative ones, this wasn’t exactly surprising. Though it didn’t help my nerves at all.

The first “real” meeting I had to organize my full committee was during the summer before my third year. This was an intentional meeting amongst the four of us to explicitly discuss the content, form, and timeline of my A-Exam. I was asked to bring a slidedeck that covered my progress over the past two years and proposed topics/forms of my A-Exam materials. Information Science students are required to establish their full committee by their third semester, so it got everyone on the same page. I highly recommend doing this. For those not as neurotic as me, it is a good reminder to see your growth and changes!

My committee really appreciated this walk through of my time in the PhD. I ended my presentation with three asks. First, I had been talking about social norm theory since I applied, yet hadn’t spent the time to dig in the literature. So, I wanted to dedicate a question to that. Second, I wanted to create a syllabus. I knew then that I didn’t want to go to a R1 university for my career and that teaching-focused institutions were attractive to me. A syllabus would be a significant add to my application materials. Lastly, I had already done a fair amount of work around online community and wanted to take time to explore historical texts in that area.

To be clear, these asks were purely aspirational. I had no idea how amendable my committee would be to any of these topics and forms. I recommend defining the content of the materials, to the extent you can, around your interests and needs.

Luckily, the conversation was quite easy from there on. The first question would be about social norm theory. Given my nascent understanding, a literature review was a reasonable form. I would cover theoretical definitions and their application in online spaces. Cool. The second question combined the topic of online community with the form of the syllabus. Rad. The last question was undefined at this point and it was with my minor committee member. At the time, I had been working with this committee member for a semester on a lead-author paper, so he suggested a submission-ready version of that paper as the last question.

Done!

Each committee member was assigned one of these three tasks and I was charged with tackling each question with the assigned committee member. I would have the managing committee member sign off on the document and then send to the full committee. If the full committee signed off, then I could schedule the final defense.

Pretty straight forward, right? Ow, foreshadowing.

Beginning the A-Exam

Okay, so there is a lot of variance as to what “counts” as candidacy materials. Is it only new content? How much old content can you repurpose? That ultimately is up to your committee. For me, I was able to pull literature I had already read into the lit review and syllabus, but not past lit reviews or papers I had written. The write-up had to be original. The first-author submission was a special case as it was ongoing and collaborative.

The research paper had a cadence and submission deadline of January, so I let that schedule stand. I added the task of putting together literature for the syllabus and waited to begin the literature review later on in the semester. At the time, the goal for presentation of these materials was the end of semester (December).

Now we run into the first issue: I was taking two courses, was a teaching assistant, and had another second-author paper in the works.

Then, the second issue: my co-chair was on sabbatical and my chair would be transitioning to sabbatical in the winter.

Concerning the first issue, this was too much. There was no reason why I was trying to fit in candidacy with this work load. I also could have scheduled my exam in the spring anyway. The fall was set by recommendation of my chair, which was a poor choice and one that I didn’t push back on in the moment. I also ended having a problematic experience in a course and ended up dropping it, which added a lot stress.

Concerning the second issue, based on my workload and the extra distance of sabbatical, it could take up to a month to get a call scheduled with my co-chair. The amount of labor/time to get regular meetings just didn’t make sense, so I opted to meet infrequently. Which (no surprises) did not pan out well.

A question you may have is: how involved were your committee members in the creation of the exam materials? Did they give you seed lists of literature? Did they collaborate? Was it the point to be completely disconnected?

Great question. Wish I would have had some clarity on that myself.

While building out my materials, it was the disconnected model. However, it still isn’t clear to me even post-exam if I was allowed to ask for help. So, I did it alone. Something I do regret, but felt necessary at the time.

The next committee check-in we had was in November. At the time I had made good progress on the research paper and syllabus, but had not started the literature review. Much to the chagrin of my committee. The lack of communication from and to the committee plus the extenuating circumstances with my dropping a class had significantly hindered my progress.

Luckily, the conversation was relatively brief and the decision was posed by a committee to push to March. I accepted and began once more.

Try Two 😐

*Deep breath*

Between the first proposed A-Exam date and the rescheduling of the second, I had overworked myself the most since starting a PhD program. I also took the heat for miscommunication, which I felt was unfair and should have been shared with the committee. All thoughts I kept to myself as I was too afraid of rocking the boat during this milestone. Based on the support from my colleagues, I think it would have made sense to push back (diplomatically) and set the record straight, but I didn’t.

Okay. At this point, I had a strong draft of a syllabus, was approaching the deadline for my research paper, and had begun putting together a long list of literature the lit review.

My committee requested a two-week period before the presentation of materials to review the full set of A-Exam materials. With the understanding that each individual committee member would approve the document before hand.

Fast-forward to January. The most I have ever worked happened during the lead-up to the AAAI ICWSM 2023 deadline of January 15th (the research paper part of my A-Exam). I was on call 10+ hours a day for close to two-weeks getting the manuscript ready for submission. Doing qualitative analysis, porting figures into the draft, stressing over the most minor Latex inconsistencies, and updating minute details for my collaborators. It was pure misery. But, it was a trade-off I made. I knew that crunching this out now, would save me from the endless iteration of a journal (something I could do now with more experience).

The following weeks I wrapped up the syllabus and had two-thirds of my A-Exam signed off my committee. One more to go.

Woo.

I literally blacked out for two weeks following the January 15th deadline. I don’t remember that time period and mostly slept.

Now in February, I have 4-6 weeks to complete the literature review. It was before the semester started, so I theoretically only had this on my plate. I just pushed and pushed and pushed until I reached the 25 page requirement and sent it to my last committee member.

Once I submitted the literature review, I took a short trip to Boston to visit friends. While walking around M.I.T.’s campus in full tourist mode, I got the email about the literature review.

It was about a page, single-spaced critique.

My heart dropped.

Try Two Three 🥴

I couldn’t even read the reviews for at least a week.

I even got an email asking if I was okay because I hadn’t responded.

Looking back, it’s clear the literature review wasn’t high quality. How could it be? It was done under duress without clear expectations about what form it should have taken. But, it also was a finished paper.

Perhaps the most disappointing piece of this period was that there was no acknowledgment of the labor I had undergone. It was critique and disappointment. Which, is fine, but it can’t come without an understanding of the context and conditions of the work.

I was defeated and deflated.

Eventually I opened the doc again and read through the critiques. Most of them were helpful, many were not. I knew what I had to do, even though I didn’t want to. I scheduled a call with the committee member overseeing the literature review to have a frank conversation about how my deliverable was so far from their expectations.

I wished that I had strength to push back and assert that while the work is not ideal, it is done. I have had an unhealthy level of working over the past months and need to rest. But, that didn’t happen.

I took the critique in stride and started from scratch.

Now, the A-Exam was scheduled for May, an extra two months to redo the literature review. Almost a year from our first planning meeting, for an exam that’s supposed to take at most 3 months.

I honestly don’t remember the following two months. I blindly read and wrote until I had over a hundred citations and nearly 30 pages written. I submitted and received almost no revision criteria. I could now “take my exam.”

The Presentation

For my department, the “defense” portion involves a one hour presentation followed by a closed doors committee questioning and decision deliberation. So, I just needed to put together the presentation and prepare for what I thought would be the questions from my committee.

But, before that happened, I passed out for another two-weeks. I probably slept for 10-12 hours every night and did not engage intellectually in any capacity. I played a lot of video games and got through a substantial part of my media catalog.

Feeling moderately rested, I began on my slides. I will say, I am quite lucky to be in Information Science. The hour long talk is public and prioritizes non-committee questions, so I didn’t have to worry about being embarrassed publicly. I was also lucky the Q&A with my committee was only 30 minutes, so there only so many questions they could ask in that time. So, I tried to have fun with the presentation. I added GIFs, I leaned into what I actually cared about, and tried to salvage why I was in the PhD through the slides.

For all the headache of doing the work, I did learn an incredible amount and felt more mature as a scholar. ***Not that it should take what I went through to get there***

I structured my slides as follows: Syllabus, Research Paper, Dissertation Overview, and Public Q&A.

You will quickly notice that my social norms literature review is nowhere to be found. I didn’t do this intentionally. As this was the first question that my committee asked in the private Q&A, I responded by saying that I didn’t find a place to fit it in given the time constraint so I left it out. They were a bit disappointed, but that’s okay.

I want to give a huge shout out to the folks who help me playtest my presentation. I was so nervous, I sped through 10 min early on my first run. They helped me add the “so what” slides, iron out muddled explanations, and make the presentation/narrative flow. Forever grateful.

And it showed, I killed my presentation. Everyone loved it and I was very proud. I had over 60 people on Zoom and a dozen more in watch parties. It was the highest attendance my committee had seen at an A-Exam presentation. Those people got me here, so thank you.

Grill, Grill, 👩🏻‍🍳

Now, perhaps the most nerve-wracking bit: the private Q&A. Just me and my committee members. They can ask any question they want and my answers will determine whether I pass or not.

*Gulp*

Well, first off let’s talk about the entry into the private zoom room. I was feeling quite good about the slidedeck and my performance with the talk. My committee really showered me with praise. They were so impressed by the structuring of the content, my speaking ability, how accessible the content was for a public audience, and how I was able to translate the findings and discuss future directions.

I was taken aback in the best way possible.

Then we settled into the evaluation piece.

I was a bit nervous, mostly because I had no idea what to expect. We hadn’t discussed what the format or expectation of questioning was. Based on chats I had with more senior students, I assumed that each committee member would stick to the paper they oversaw, but that was not the case. Essentially all the questions I was asked revolved around the literature review on social norms.

Are you kidding me.

The one I struggled with? The one that made me want to drop out? The one I had to do twice?

I braced myself and heard the first question. Okay, that’s not too bad, I can answer that.

Then the second came and I could answer that too.

This was the moment I realized that I was the expert. I knew more than them. So, I should act like it. I leaned into the confidence and answered every question they had. And, before I knew it, the questioning was over and I left the zoom call to wait for deliberation.

Five minutes later and I was told I passed my candidacy exam.

Reflections

My hope is that what you read above will not be the case for your candidacy process. My hope is that you spot the points where I should have pushed back, where questions should have been asked in advance, where (over) communicating would have resolved issues. In all honesty, there is little from my A-Exam I can look fondly on. I don’t find it helpful to romanticize this period of time. It was the first time I considered dropping out. It was the first time I forced myself into such severe overwork.

I do hope this was helpful. That the granularity gives some tangibility to the nitty-gritty of the process. How unpredictable and flexible it can be.

Good luck.