The First Milestone in my PhD Journey: The Prelim Exam
A few months ago, I remember hearing about Prelim presentations from the then-second years in HCDE. On the days of the presentations, my schedule was chock-full with classes and meetings, but I knew I had to make time to attend at least one presentation, just to gauge the levels and type of presentation that would be expected of me in less than a year. As it so happened, I could make it to exactly one presentation, during which I watched Gabrielle demonstrate Sybil, a Divinatory Home Device. The presentation and the quality of the work on display, quite simply, took my breath away. As I left the Zoom meeting at the end of the presentation, I wondered to myself, “If the standards of these presentations are SO high, how on earth am I going to come up with that in less than a year?”
Fast forward several months, and it came time for my own prelim. The way these exams work is that second year students get assigned a committee of faculty reviewers, and are required to submit a paper and a reflection based on their first year doing research in the program. We are also required to present on the work in front of an open audience, though mostly comprised of HCDE students and faculty.
Since asking myself that question after Gabrielle’s presentation, I had learned the crucial lesson of not comparing anyone else’s work or PhD journey to my own. When my time to take the exam came around, I realized that I would have a lot of fun with it because it combined two of my favorite things to do: write and present material I am passionate about. When it came time for my written submission, I was quite confident in submitting a paper that was under Major Revisions review at CSCW, titled “I love this, I missed you”: An Analysis of Emotion-based Connections in an Online Fanfiction Community. I felt proud of the paper and the work that went into it, and not having it get rejected upon first attempt at CSCW!
The presentation (you can view the content here) part of the exam was even more enjoyable, yet oddly nerve-wracking. When I came in to the room in the morning and watched the first set of presenters, my fellow cohort mates, effortlessly show off all the exciting work they had done and were planning on doing in the future, I felt the same creeping feeling of matching the standards from a year ago.
My time slot was directly after lunch, a time I simultaneously love and hate for the possibility of varied post-lunch energy levels from audience members. As we reconvened after lunch and I went about setting up for the presentation, I tried my best to hide my nerves behind a smile. After I was introduced, I made a joke about the post-lunch spot and suddenly, as I launched into the presentation, the nerves calmed down. I tapped into my showman-self and attempted to put on a show, making jokes and references as they occurred to me, differently than from my practice run. The nerves did catch up a bit as I broke a sweat racing the clock to finish my content, but at the end of it, I felt satisfied. During the questions and answers session, I thankfully did not receive any hardballs I could not tackle and as I left the podium for the next presenter, I felt a sense of calm settle in.
Though the results of the exam are not in, I feel like I did alright and possibly checked this milestone on my PhD journey. And onwards we go!
