How to Prepare Yourself for Dissertation Defense

Dissertation defense is one of the most stressful things that a PhD student has to go through in his or her doctoral life. After the dissertation gets ready, now it's time to prepare yourself for a "lekenpraatje" or attending a room full of scholars and present your dissertation. You don't know what questions are going to come on your way and you have to be prepared for defending your dissertation to make a strong impact on the scholars and intellectuals. In this article, we will try to find out some useful techniques by which you can prepare yourself for the forthcoming array of uncertain questionnaire.

Reread Your Dissertation: You have no idea what questions can be asked once you give your presentation. So it is very necessary that you have a good hold on what you have prepared so far. Go through your dissertation as many times as you can and make simple notes of important points. If you have taken expert consultation from some service provider, you can ask your queries to them and get a clear view of your paper. Don't forget to pay minute attention to your theoretical chapter as questions may arise on your proposed model.

Make a Gist of Your Dissertation: While reading your dissertation, you can make a gist of it. Try to compress the gist of a page into one line and note it down. This will help you to get hold of your subject matter and help you to memorize the crux of your thought.

Make a Crisp Presentation of Your Dissertation: To create an impact on the scholars that are invited to attend the defense and give them an overview of your work, a presentation of your dissertation can help you no doubt. Prepare a Power Point Presentation long before the defense date and rehearse as much as you can. Make sure your presentation, captured in slides, represents your dissertation within the specified time limit.

Try to Think Possible Questions: You can turn your meeting notes that you get from the committee members and turn those into probable questions. Try to gather an idea of probable questions from the committee members, promoter or copromoter. Give your guesswork an extra shot and try to list some possible questions per committee member.