Unlike the Ph.D. defense in US and China, the defense committee in Germany will score the final defense based on the quality of the dissertation, the talk/presentation of the work and the oral defense/exam. Based on the rumors, the dissertation accounts 60%, presentation accounts 15% and final defense accounts 25%. However what I worried about is only the presentation. Because it was written in the defense regularity that the presententation should be finished within 25 to 30 min, less than 25 min. or over 30 min. will be fatal. Beside that, unfluent talking is also fatal :(
Although my colleagues tried to calm me down by telling me that the committee won't be so strict to a foreign student, I couldn't help worrying about it. Because I just finished first version of the slides on Monday, then practiced the german prolog on Monday evening; on Tuesday I improved the slides to the almost final version and started to practise some parts of the talk; on Wednsday I did practise the whole talk for the first time; on Thursday practising the talk with time limitation. Friday, DEFENSE!!! I nearly couldn't take anytime on preparing for the questions in the oral defense.
Fortuantely, I felt quite calm on friday and after eating a delicious dinner made by 00 I felt even better :D. Based on the latest notification (because of an important soccer match: Germany against Argentina, the defense committee decided to push my defense 30 min. in advance) my presentation will start at 15:25, we left home around 14:30 and bought some TicTac candy (I did actualy want to buy Fishman, but it was coincidently sold out) for refreshing my throat on the way.
When I arrived, another colleague Rafael Radkowski just finished his defense (we start our Ph.D. programme at the same time and fortunately also finished at the same time). I saw he was waiting outside nervously for the announcement of his final score. I greeted him and we had no mood to talk further and I went directly to the meeting room and repared my presentation. After settling the hardware staff, I went out for some fresh air. And just in time, Rafael's final score came out, which was "Ausgezeichnet" ( in english is Excellent). As far as I remember, only 3~5% people got this grade. I felt glad for him and congratulated him with a big tight hug and he wished me good luck. However that gave me even more pressure.
There's nothing special to say about my presentation, I haven't done it ever better than that and finished my talk just when my Presenter viberated, which was set for 26 min. I should thank my colleagues and friends for reacting my talking with their positive expression in their eyes and nodding, which gave me great confidence. The oral defense was easier as I thought, the professors didn't ask many deep theoretical questions. However, the question were very general and covered CS, ME and EE, which might relate to my work. I was confused twice in my defense. Once was by a extreme easy and self-explaining questions. I did beg the professor to ask it both in english and german to make sure that I didn't make a mistake in understanding the question. But it was indeed simple, which became however difficult to response. I had no idea but re-explicated the meaning of the question in another mean. Fortunately, the professor seemed to be satisfied. Another suprising question was the last one, they asked me to predict the results of the upcoming soccer match: Germany <-> Argentina. I was frozen for a while and then answered, " Germany will win" ! After that, I got the "Sehr Gut" grade (in english is Very Good, which is one grade less than Excellent). I was totally satisfied or even much more better than I expected...
After a long queued congratulations, all the friends, colleagues and professors sat together and started to watch the soccer match, which started at 17:00. As I had predicted, Germany did beat Argentina in the final Penalty Shoot-Out. We started the celebration with a dilicious Banquet and "hundered" bottles of beer were drunk in that night...
It's saddly to see germany lost their chance on July 4 to get the 2006 world cup ... :(
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