Phd Life

I recently filed my PhD dissertation at UCLA. The information on the Graduate Division website was very helpful in getting me started, but I still ran into plenty of questions once I was actually in the middle of the process, and the answers weren’t always easy to find online. I was really grateful for all the help along the way: from the filing workshop and drop-in hours to alumni in my lab and my program coordinators. I learned a lot through those conversations, so I’m writing it down while it’s still fresh, in case it’s useful to anyone else going through the process. ...

I haven’t posted in more than two months, almost three. Here’s what I did: I defended and filed my dissertation, and officially became a Dr. The Weeks Before the Defense In my program, the convention is to send your committee a full dissertation draft between two weeks and a month before your defense. So for most of July, that’s what I was doing: writing. At the same time, I was working on a lengthy fellowship application and taking a two-week NeuroAI summer course I’d committed to months earlier. ...