Yesterday I had my thesis defence and it was an all-round success. I’m here to share the details.
DEPARTMENT
My thesis work was done at the Sports Medicine center.
TOPIC
I chose my topic after a few conversations with one of the supervisors I spoke to. My topic was Investigating the Symptoms and Risks of the Female Athlete Triad Among University Students. I had taken an optional course a couple of semesters back, called Practice-oriented Sports Medicine, and I was introduced to the Female Athlete Triad, and after some research, I decided it was something I was interested in. My initial topic was the Effects of Physical Activity on the Female Reproductive System with Special Attention to Female Athletes, but as I started writing, I realised that the research work had gone in a different direction and after consulting with my supervisor and the Registrar’s office on the possibility of a change, it was approved and I modified the topic.
SUPERVISOR
I started the whole journey with one supervisor, Dr Kiss Gabriella, PhD. She eventually passed me on to another supervisor who I ended up completing the thesis work with, Dr. Tékus Éva, PhD. I can boldly recommend either.
Tip: Check out this blog post on choosing a thesis supervisor.
THESIS WORK
I conducted a survey study for my thesis work. I found a validated questionnaire, set the criteria for participants, set it up on Google forms and distributed it. I distributed on social media in Facebook groups and Whatsapp groups for the different years, amongst friends who also distributed to their friends (thank you guys🙏) and also in person. I attempted to reach out to certain groups and departments, including but not limited to the Dance University and the Physical Activity & Movement Center to ask for their help with distribution, but to no avail. My supervisor also helped to distribute amongst people that met the criteria. Our goal was at least 50 responses but after exhausting all these opportunities, I could only get 46 and we ended up moving forward with that.
The most effective way turned out to be distribution with and amongst friends. The least effective was in-person distribution.
For the data and statistical analysis section of the thesis work, I was able to recruit help for it, because however much I thought I knew about MS Excel, it was not at all enough for everything I had to do. My supervisor also helped a bit with that, particularly IBM SPSS as I did not have the programme.
I needed to also do some literature review for the thesis. I found relevant articles on PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus and ResearchGate. I manually kept track of my citations but I really recommend that you use a citation programme like Mendeley Cite or Zotero.
Tip: If you need assistance with data & statistical analysis, reach out to the departments and see if a professor might be willing to assist. You can also inquire amongst students of the Faculty of (1) Business & Economics, (2) Sciences or (3) Engineering and IT to see if someone has an above average knowledge of MS Excel/SPSS/other data analysis programme and is willing to help.
CONSULTATIONS
Most of our consultations were email consultations. We met over MS Teams once but email served us fine. I received replies on time and it was a mostly seamless process.
PREPARING FOR THE DEFENCE
You are required to prepare a slideshow presentation (PowerPoint, Prezi, etc) on your thesis work. My supervisor asked me to keep the slideshow between 12 and 15 slides, which I managed to do, including the Intro and the Acknowledgements slides. I put my notes in the Powerpoint presentation in the presenter notes section.
I practiced the whole presentation multiple times the day before and the morning of the defence to ensure that (1) I did not need to rely on presenter notes and (2) I kept it under 15 minutes.
I received the written review of the thesis work about a week before the defence date.
Tip: Presenter notes are just for prompting. Don’t rely on them, don’t read the presentation off of them and definitely, don’t have a sheet of paper to read off of. Keep it in there 🧠
DEFENCE
The defence was on the 4th of March 2024 at 10:00. I arrived at the Sports Medicine Center (2nd building, 1st floor) at Akác u. 1 about 30 minutes before. I met my supervisor for the first time in person. I had my presentation on a flash drive and we were able to set up. There was another student who came for their presentation. I started first (I guess because I arrived first). The set-up of the conference room allowed me to be able to sit while giving the presentation which I truly appreciated because I was fighting nerves badly. The committee was made up of three members, plus one observing audience I brought- four in total. The pointer faltered at the beginning and so I ended up not being able to use it. I spoke for about 12-13 minutes and got one question from the committee on the reason for choosing the questionnaire I used. There was a closed consultation for maybe 2-3 minutes and I was welcomed back in, informed that it was an excellent presentation. Hands were shaken, thank-you’s said and that was it.
That’s everything I have to say about my thesis and thesis defence. If you have any questions, be sure to reach out or put it in the comments. Those who have already gone through this process and have some tips or information, please put them in the comments.
If you would like to take a look at my thesis and/or my thesis defence presentation, you can access them here and here respectively. These are restricted links but if you kindly send (separate) requests, they will be made available to you.