exactly one year ago i defended my thesis in utrecht, the netherlands, and i was awarded my PhD. for 4 years i worked in a lab, wrote it all down during a few very stressful months and then defended my thesis on the 22nd of january, 2010; pictured above. ooh, i was so nervous! mostly because it was all sooo official! nothing concerning the dutch PhD is official, but the day of your defence.. then suddenly you have to dress up, your family, friends and coworkers are there and you are being questioned for 45 minutes by your supervisor and other doctors/professors (behind the microphones) about your thesis. some questions were not very difficult, some i did not understand at all, like the very first question i got. frankly, i still do not know what exactly the question was (perhaps because of my english? :)). thats the other weird thing; for 4 years, every labmeeting, every discussion, the thesis itself; everything is done in english. but during the defence i suddenly had to speak in dutch when i was being questioned by dutch profs, and english when being questioned by the foreign professors.
in the back you see the audience, around the table all the profs, and in the middle there are my 2 "paranimfen" (wiki; a ceremonial assistant and/or coach in a ceremony), and me standing. i just received my PhD (an enormous diploma that tim later forgot in the restaurant where we had lunch; i was just a big bit angry about that!), and my supervisor is giving a speech...... PhD stands for "doctor of philosophy" and if you want to know why this kind of doctors are called PhD,
here is the wiki about that!
ah well.. nothing changed now that i am a PhD, i dont feel different, im not smarter, and my salary is still not very high....
