Man. What a beast of a thing this turns out to be.
For context; people wishing to pursue a postgraduate qualification by full dissertation (Master or Doctorate) are expected to present and defend a project proposal early on, if not at the start of their studies. At PhD level, this proposal has to convince your university that a) you are well versed in the extant literature in your field; b) a knowledge gap has been identified in the literature; c) you have come up with a workable research design to add a unique knowledge contribution to address the identified knowledge gap. [This is not an extensive definition/description.] This proposal allows young academics continuing straight from their previous qualifications to discover and develop their understanding of their fields. Similarly, the process helps ‘older’ academics returning from industry or other journeys in life to find their footing. It is especially helpful to ground yourself if you’re coming into the PhD with a strong idea of what you want to ‘prove’ – not because the proposal will confirm everything you thought, but because the process will force you to reconsider your assumptions and expectations in light of existing work.
Personally, the process of researching and writing my PhD proposal was exhilarating and fun. I enjoyed exploring different avenues of research and discovering scholars doing really cool work. I also had a lot of fun learning about methodologies I never knew existed. It is fun to pick up threads from different conversations in the literature, weave them together, and see what comes out on the other end. The process of developing a proposal helped me define a research project that is exciting, challenging, and meaningful.
Defending the research proposal is a process intended to help you by getting fresh eyes on your thinking. Experienced academics engage with your written proposal, and then meet with you and your supervisor to hash things out. The Yin of this engagement is a meeting of minds working together to ensure that the project you are going to commit a number of years to, is something that has a good chance of being worthwhile. The Yang of this whole spiel is the workplace politicking and flexing amongst peers who may – as per the Reviewer 2 memes – use the opportunity to very bluntly not be helpful. As you may be able to tell, my experience was… balanced.
I enjoyed presenting my proposal to the faculty committee, and appreciated the helpful questions and feedback that came from the defence discussion. I did not expect that an objection to my proposal would be that I seemed to be “too sure that the study would work”. Please note, not that my hypothesis would prove to be correct – but that the study design would be serviceable. (I thought that was the point of developing the proposal.) The other surprise was that my decidedly no-tech proposal elicited the critique that “the roll of technology in the intervention was not described”.
I mean… yes?
It’s been a month since I’ve submitted the revisions. The quiet is maddening.