Half-time - halfway to a doctorate

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Now it's half time! Today I have completed my mid-term seminar. I am a doctoral student at Karolinska Institutet and half-time, for those of you who are not familiar with the academic world, is a seminar that takes place when you have reached halfway to a doctorate. Being able to do this feels like a big step along the way!

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How does the mid-term seminar work?

The half-term is booked well in advance and an assessment board has to be selected and invited. This alone is a major project. The review panel should consist of researchers from different universities, and have different areas of expertise, all of which are relevant to the research area in different ways. At the same time, no one on the committee should have any connection whatsoever to any of your supervisors, as this would constitute a conflict of interest. This is certainly understandable, but in a small country like Sweden it is quite difficult to achieve.

When the time comes, you present your research project to the examining committee, which of course has also read up on it in advance. The examining committee (in my case, researchers from three different universities) will probably have questions, requests for clarification and may also require certain changes. The purpose is to check that you are on the right track ...

Good but tiring

It is of course very good to have wise comments along the way! After all, half-time is an opportunity to get tips and suggestions on how to proceed in the best possible way to achieve a good end result. At the same time, the mid-term check is of course a thing that is exhausting and that you know must be carried out. It's nice to have it done! Now I will sleep a little while ... then the weekend begins!

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