Dear all my committee members,

I have completed all my 4 written exams finally at 8:00pm last Friday. Although I have not known the result of if I pass or not yet, I sincerely appreciate all your talent, generosity, and effort on making those exams for me. I did learn a lot during answering those questions, not only on technique theories but also on humanity and self-consciousness.

Here I would like to make a conclusion on both my achievement and my weakness by a self-analysis.

Achieved:
1) general understanding on four topics: Nematology, Phylogenetics, Statistics, and Genomics.
2) time-limited writing
3) comprehensive thinking on a depth of asking and solving questions
4) scientific methodologies and how they are built.
5) rethink my role and life.

Weakness:
1) time management should be improved: 4 exams were given with 48hrs (5 questions) , 28 hrs (3 questions), 8hrs (1 question), and 12 hrs (6 question). Every individual question could be a review paper if the time allowed, depending on how depth the answer would touch. Therefore the time management is vital. The planned time schedule I made was actually not the same as the real time consuming during answering, which then brought a lot pressure on following questions.

2) learned knowledge in my head is actually not as accurate or clear as what I expected. On some technique details, when I needed to touch specific depth and explain clearly, I noticed lots of uncertainties on those details. This condition not only forced me to go back and recheck those information, but also shacked and doubted my confidence on precision of my original understanding, which influenced me psychologically.

3) missing pieces in my knowledge system. Lots of crucial points were not well noticed in my research until I realize that during exams. Those missing pieces are indeed highly related with my research, for example, term “synteny” and all its related knowledge.

​4) for some questions like comparison of two methods or different materials, a better way to answer might be given following this structure: (1) historical reference summary on both methods or materials (2) conclude the common philosophical ideas and techniques used ​behind (3) experimental design on comparison with a developing viewpoint.

1), 2), 3), and 4) together become a factor to limit the depth and width of my answers within the given time. It is also a factor of unbalanced context between answers.

5) the writing was not clean, format or citation was not well polished or concluded. On one hand, during answering, I ate and digest references first then focusing on using my own words to write my understanding, so that some citations might be missed. On the other hand, the answer strategy was to build a structure first then to fill details in each part. However, sometimes I changed my mind on the answer structure during writing, so that it made my answer processing to be a fluster under a deadline pressure. Although my answers are not good enough as what I expected, I am very positive on my attitude of carefulness and honesty. This weakness could be improved with better time management and better mentally stable.

​Again, here lots of thanks to all my committee members ​for your great help. I’ll continue my research with what I gained from these exams. If you have any comment, question or concern when you grade my answers, please feel free to let me know.

Regards,
Max