On Quals

Ahhh - its been a while since I posted - gonna have to fix this at some point given that I no longer update biweekly.

But recently, I wanted to talk about quals, the dreaded demon that had been hiding in the back of my mind for the greater part of 4 years!

A had graciously made these signs for the quals post 5k run! (JS had to be photoshopped in as he was unable to make it).

For those who do not know, quals (short for qualifying exams) are a set of exams that determine Ph.D. candidacy. Basically, it tests whether you are ready to complete a full dissertation or do you just want to get your Master's and leave. Until you pass quals, you are just a grad student, and after that you can officially call yourself a Ph.D candidate.

The story for quals begins back in my undergrad at Saad's lab. Chemical and BioEngineering quals at GaTech was particularly brutal - the students had to read a paper and then take a 2 hour oral exam. Our lab had 4 grad students; 1 of them failed their quals and decided to leave after masters, 1 failed twice before leaving with masters, and 1 failed and then passed the second time, and the 1 passed on the first try. We had 4 failures before our first pass.

Noticing all of these in first hand had stricken a deep demon inside of me; in my mind, I wasn't so much worried about finishing the dissertation, I was more afraid that I would fail my quals. This fear dogged me through the my time at Stanford, and it became more and more intense as the day of my quals- May 5th - edged closer.

In BioE at Stanford, quals is set up as a 1hr 30 minute session. 15 minute research presentation, and then 3 professors have 35 minutes of questioning on the presentations. Afterwards, another 30 minutes on three separate topics, with each professor leading a topic.

My topics were 1. Research Breadth in Tissue Engineering, 2. Cell Biology, and 3. Machine Learning.

I knew from the beginning that I was going to be screwed slightly - Cell Biology was one of those topics that I am not great at, and I barely got a B in that class in undergrad. So why didn't I choose another one? Well, the other topics for my 2nd choice were stuff that I hadn't even studied (developmental biology, evolutionary biology, immunology to name a few). I chose Machine Learning as it was the subject of most of my classes here at Stanford, and being really honest, I wanted to live up to my ego.

In March, my advisor M and the rest of us in the lab who are taking the quals J, F, JS, decided to sit down and start having meetings to develop our presentations. All was going fine (a little too well, if I think about it) and well, until the Friday before my quals where we were giving our practice presentations, M dropped a nuclear bomb on me. M was not happy with the direction of my presentation, and he wanted me to start from scratch.

Let me repeat that - I had to start from scratch - 6 days before my actual quals. I was confused, hurt, and frankly scared, and in that moment I wasn't sure if I could trust M. But in the days that followed, I took a leap of faith in M, and pulled together the presentation in 5 days with his guidance and with help from J and F as well. But at the cost of this, I hadn't studied as much as for my topics as I wanted to. The night before, I stayed up and crammed as much cell biology and machine learning as I could.

The day of my quals - I don't particularly remember it as well anymore. Once I started my presentation, it sort of flowed from there. F and a few others came and sat in my presentation, and that provided me a confidence boost. Afterwards, I somehow held up during questioning from my committee.

After an hour and 40 minutes, I had passed. I knew mentally that I had cleared the biggest hurdle of my Ph.D. - passing my quals. I am not worried about my ability to finish my dissertation, if I can pull together an entire story and presentation in less than a week, and still live to fight another day - I can do anything.

J, JS and I decided beforehand that we would run this 5K being held in the weekend after quals. However, JS couldn't attend it. J's girlfriend A made some awesome signs for us - and the picture above is from the event, and JS was photoshopped in! (The picture is from his middle school days!)

But what I wanted to share that during that run, for the first time in during my Ph.D. my mind was really was free. The demon had taken flight, and it finally paid years of back rent in the form of confidence.

My time wasn't super amazing, J and others were significantly faster! - but all in all, doing that with everyone else reminded me how much other's support was crucial in getting through this - family, friends, mentors, and colleagues.

After all, the Ph.D. isn't a solo journey, its a Star Trek exploration.