Academia

I was going to blog about something else, but this story instantly jumped the queue after I read it because I was so infuriated by it. The story is about the University of Victoria's Student Society (UVSS) banning the Canadian Forces from recruiting in the Student Union Building (home of the annual career fair). Whether you're for or against Canada's involvement in Afghanistan, please read the "enlightened" reasons why the Canadian Forces are being banned.

I saw an interesting article on the National Post entitled, "Canadian Universities Condemn Any Israeli Ban."


Read on in the article to see what other Canadian universities are saying. I guess I find this article interesting because from my experience in university, academia tends to have a heavy anti-Israel bias. So, I'm surprised by the strong stands that Canadian university presidents are taking on this issue in defending Israel.

Last month, I was walking home from downtown and I ran into one Mr. Hank Nienhuis. He was the drama teacher at my high school, and my sound crew used to do sound and lighting for all of his major plays and productions. I always looked forward to organizing sound and lights for the annual dinner theater because it was a catered buffet event, and we all got to eat for free.

Anyway, he seemed to be doing quite well. He's done a lot of travelling in his retirement, and I believe he recently came back from Europe. Also, he and his wife volunteers at the Thrift Store on Government St. and Bay St. (next to the foreign car dealer) every Monday, which is where I bumped into him. He was talking about how great of a salesman he was because he sold a lot of furniture that day. He tried to peddle some used furniture on me too.

We reminisced a bit about the past. Some things never changed though. I was still doing well in academia, still into web development, and still doing sound and lighting for shows. The foundations of all of this can be traced back to high school. Good times.

Suddenly I feel older.

In either case, go visit him at the Thrift Store on Government St. and Bay St. on Mondays. Make his day and buy a couch from him.

Well, today was finally my convocation ceremony, and I have officially received my Master's degree from the University of Victoria. That's another expensive piece of paper that's getting mounted on the wall.

Everyone has been asking if I was excited. Honestly, today was just another day. I was far more excited in February when I successfully defended my master's project which concluded my academic requirements. That was when I celebrated and felt that I had crossed the finish line. The ceremony today was more of a formality. I'd probably be more thrilled if I had finished my program in May, but I didn't.

For anyone who has actually attended a convocation ceremony, they tend to be fairly boring. You sit there waiting for your loved one to be called up, and they get their 20 seconds of fame on the stage, and then you wait for hundreds of other students to get their degrees before you can leave.

So, today I defended my master's project by presenting my work and answering questions from a panel of professors, and I have passed. This marks the end of the academic journey that has spanned 6 years and 5 months.

The first thing one of my co-workers said to me after the defence was how calm and collected I seemed while giving the presentation. Honestly, I was fairly calm because I had already done a practice run of my presentation on Friday, and I had to hardly tweek it. In addition, all grad students in my program have to go through a course on giving presentations, and I was the top presenter, so I wasn't too worried.

I remember talking to Mr. Teel who had finished his masters last year, and he said that he wasn't nervous at all when he had to defend his thesis. He said that the hard part is getting the document written and getting it successfully reviewed by professors. The defence itself is pretty straightforward because you're the expert of that subject. Looking back at it, I would agree with his statements.

The part that I was most worried about was the questions afterwards because the professors would have questions about my project, and three courses that I had taken during graduate studies. It's pretty hard to study for three courses especially if you have no idea what would be asked ahead of time. Thankfully, the questions were mostly about my project (which I'm an expert in), and there were just a handful of questions about my courses. Needless to say, I overstudied by a long shot this time.

One of the professors spent most of his time inquiring about how easy it would be to add certain features because he wanted to use my software for the university. So, this is a good sign because it means he was rather impressed by my implementation, and he could see other uses for it.

The one course that the professors did ask a lot of questions about was on open source software engineering, since my supervisor taught me that course. There was a lot of discussion around that because all of the professors thought that this was an interesting topic. At times, they were debating with each other which is good, because that runs the clock down, and it means less questions for me.

Overall, I think there were two or three questions that I didn't know the answer to, but that was okay. One of the questions that the professor gave didn't make a lot of sense to me, and when he gave the answer, I realized that the answer he gave was wrong. However, the master's defence survival guide says not to argue with a professor even if they're wrong; choose your battles to fight.

After the professors finished with their questioning, everyone was asked to leave the room while the professors discussed whether my work was significant enough to be awarded a Master's degree. They took about 15 minutes to talk it through. Then, the door opened, and the three professors came out bearing congratulations and handshakes. They also informed me that I didn't need to make any revisions to my technical project report, so I am completely done.

All in all, the professors were rather impressed by my technical project. As mentioned before, one of them is interested in adopting the software for other uses at the university, so there's some potential there.

Anyway, I'm very glad that it's over. It still hasn't quite sunk in yet, but I'm sure I'll be more excited later. All that I'm thinking about right now is getting some decent sleep because I have been staying up pretty late studying for the last few nights. But just think.... tomorrow, no more studying! And the day after..... no more studying! This is going to take some getting used to

So, that's another set of acronyms that I can tack onto my name.

Mr. Chan, MSc. BSc.

Looks pretty snazzy.

Well, it's 12 hours before my Master's Defence. Honestly, I thought I'd be much more nervous on the night before the big op, but I'm fairly calm. Really, I just want to get this thing over with because I've been studying for the last 5 days straight.

The checklist for tomorrow morning is to go over my notes and presentation one more time, read over the thesis once more, get dressed up, get psyched up, and into battle we go.

Here's a speech by Adama that will set the tone for tomorrow as I prepare for end.

This one goes out to all of my friends, family, and the Lord for supporting me through this long and arduous journey. Special shout out goes to Myron as he couldn't make it to the defence because of a turn of events.

It's on.

I have finally confirmed a date for my Master's defence. It is scheduled for February 20th, 2007. This marks the final step before ascending to the title of master. Just to make things more epic, I made this movie trailer for my defence. Time well wasted


So, I have ten days to prepare for this defence, so things are going to be fairly crazy. If blog updates or e-mail responses seem tardy, you'll know exactly why.

[Updated]. Random thought #1. It's quite challenging trying to condense a 90 page master's project down to 15-20 slides for a presentation, and having only 20 minutes to present all of the material.