Defending a masters thesis at ESI

Today I was the fourth member of a committee for a student masters thesis defense. It was probably the best day I've had at ESI so far.

The student was brilliant, the thesis was very well written, no one had any major complaints, and the whole thing went off beautifully.

The defense had the following structure:

The members of the committee met briefly to discuss overall impressions. We entered the auditorium together, and the President of the committee (Mouna Benslimane) welcomed us all, and actually, she also went out of her way to welcome me in particular (very nice).

The student presented her work using a PowerPoint.

Then I, as the guest committee member, got to point out all of the things I ddin't like about the paper. It's not easy to go first when you've never seen this kind of thing before. The student had done so well and I had such a poor idea of what was expected of students at this level in Morocco that I only really mentioned cosmetic things about the paper itself. It did take me about 15 minutes, though, to go through all of the problems with the bibliography; those, of course, I do not consider cosmetic.

Then the other three members of the committee or "jury" spoke in turn. It was all very formal and very "thank you Mme the Président of the committee" which is kind of fun. I never tire of pomp and circumstance.

There were probably 40 people in attendance, and after the deliberation and the announcement of the decision ("tres bien" for both the presentation and the thesis itself), we all went and had cookies and coffee and mint tea at a lovely reception in the lobby of the school. We'd started at 2:30 and we finished around 5:00.

A fine afternoon and an enjoyable way to begin my last two weeks in Morocco. Thank you all for such a memorable experience. And of course, congratulations Fatima on a job well done!