Conquer Your PhD Dissertation Proposal Defense - No More Nerves!

Doing a proposal defense it's a scary time for anybody. Realize that it's completely normal to be nervous or uncertain. If you weren't nervous then you're probably not taking it seriously.

What does a thesis proposal defense normally look like? Usually, you give some sort of presentation about your research, and then there is anywhere from a half an hour or two to our discussion about your research.

Questions to Expect During Your Thesis Proposal:

There will be questions about your literature review and whether you're covering enough literature.

There will be questions about your constructs and how you measure your constructs.

There will also be questions about how you plan to do your research.

In particular, expect questions about the construction of your hypothesis, or the construction of your research plan.

There's also questions about the contributions with your research, and whether it should be trimmed or expanded.

Tips For your Dissertation Proposal Defense:

1. Realize that you know more about the literature than the people that are evaluating you. Your role is more of an explanatory role or teacher, than be on the line.

2. If you get crushed during your dissertation proposal defense, get back up and keep going. I does not mean you are wrong, it just means you are not explaining yourself clearly enough.

Check out:

Doing Your PhD Is A Marathon, Not A Sprint

7 Lies People Believe About PhDs (And Professors)

Doctorate In Business Administration (DBA) And PhD In Business Career Path

Professor And Entrepreneur: Should You Become An Entrepreneur In Academia?

How To Write Faster As A Professor / PhD (And Why You Don’t Want To)

PhD Motivation: Enthusiasm For Learning During Your PhD Journey And For Research

Doctoral Degree Student Loans: Should You Get Student Loans For A Doctoral Degree?

Can You Submit To Multiple Academic Journals With The Same Article? And, Ethical Issues As A PhD

Unoriginal Research Ideas: What To Do When You Discover Your Research Has Been Done Before?

Staying On Top Of Research: How Do You Keep Up With Scientific Research In Your Field?

PhD Without Prior Research Experience: Do You Need Research Experience For A PhD?

Academia, Stress, And Mental Health: Depression Among Professors And PhD Students.

***

David Maslach is a research professor of entrepreneurship, innovation, and business strategy, I discuss topics, such as behavioral science, strategy, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and apply these to my new peer proofreading and editing platform. Topics include the sharing economy, altruism, investing in technology, starting a business, and bounded rationality. My favorite videos pertain to incentives, goal setting, and learning from failure to drive behaviors such as weight loss, stopping telemarketers, creating novel technologies, and creating new movements.


A new platform where you can earn credits by editing other people's documents. Use these credits to have your own work edited. If you do a good enough job, you can convert these credits to money.

The goal of the platform is to get people to 'pay it forward' and help other people out by creating incentives for people to give back.


Please subscribe to the Youtube channel:

[yuxinchen]

I will defend tomorrow. Your video releases my anxiety and helps me to keep calm and think about what I have prepared. It was great advice to view the defense as the first pass to communicate my ideas to the committee. Thank you!

[tochukwujake]

I am an international student trying to attempt a great leap from a BSc to a research PhD in UK after leaving the academic field since 2016. I will be discussing my proposal next week Wednesday and somehow I feel lost! She said its an online chat, honestly I believe it's going to be a defense panel and I feel less prepared. Thank you for this video, the water is becoming clearer somehow.

[arianneharris]

I have mine tomorrow and I'm nervous as hell...thanks for this!

[douglasmwiraria]

am defending on Monday.. this video is very helpful

[xgatetogatex]

Thanks alot, my proposal defense will be soon..this just arrived in time..am learning alot from you ..am so happy you just make things easy.😊

[cenakp]

Hello, thanks for the video. I have defended my proposal, it was accepted, but one of the committees asked me to revise my defense proposal (the written proposal). He asked me to explain some concepts in detail which he believed were not clearly explained in the dissertation.

Also, during the defense, he was really offensive and interrupted me at times when I was answering another committee's questions or explaining a concept. He even questioned my degree and said the articles that I cited are "a bunch of crap". I never confronted this gentleman in the past and was very nice to him. I was really offended by his behavior but did not respond to him out of the respect for my own advisor. Could you please give me some tips on how to approach this kind of behavior and what can I do? Also is it normal to ask a student to revise a proposal after he is accepted?

Thank you. I appreciate your response either privately or in public.

[rasu]

Why “if you’re not nervous, you are not taking it seriously”???