The Home Straight

The home straight—or, pre-defence: completed!

My master’s programme at RANEPA is drawing to a close. Once St Tatiana’s Day is over, all normal students start their holidays. For those of us in the third and final year of our part-time master’s programme, however, the busiest period is just beginning.

By mid-January, we all had to finish writing our master’s theses (for some reason, I still much prefer the term “diploma thesis”, but it is what it is…), get them approved by our supervisors and pass our pre-defence. The pre-defence took place this Monday. Our entire small group gathered in the main building, and luckily finding empty classrooms is not much of a problem at the moment.

For four hours, we took turns giving our presentations, answering tricky questions and working through different scenarios for the final defence. It is safe to say that only the most determined made it this far: two and a half years ago, there were two groups of 24 people, but only 16 are going forward to the defence. Two out of every three fell by the wayside on the journey towards mastering the science of public administration.

We all successfully passed the pre-defence. Now comes a certain amount of routine: completing the supporting paperwork, obtaining reviews from external assessors, printing and binding the dissertation itself, and submitting the entire package.

Then all that remains is the defence, scheduled for 11 February, followed by a long wait for the graduation ceremony. The current plan is for it to take place on 23 May.

No sand, no water for any of us!