PRESENTING THE GREAT DOCTOR J

Cort and Tom (1st), Dan, Cort, Tom -- the famous advisors

Cort did a fabulous job on his thesis defense. He made and used appx. 50 slides, and did his entire presentation in about 1 hour. His committee involved 4 MIT professors, but there were friends, colleagues, and yours truly present in the audience. His committee peppered questions throughout the presentation, but Cort was ready for 'em. They would ask experiment questions like, "Did you think to do this?" or questions involving his math assumptions. And he anticipated their questions -- often the response to their question was on the next slide (at one point, his response to one of the questions was "ta da!" and then he presented the next slide which was the perfect answer -- I am not kidding about this). He was a little nervous, but he was very clear headed and extremely well prepared.

After it was over, the colleagues and I left the room, and Cort met with his committee. As I was milling about with his colleagues, they seemed very enthusiastic (I heard the phrase "I can't believe how much analysis he did"). I was a little worried about so many questions during the presentation, but his labmate Nate said that in experimental physics, the more questions the better -- it means the experiment was interesting and kept you thinking about what the next step should be. Cort then came out and waited with the rest of us, while his colleagues shook his hands and told him what a good job he did. Then his committee came outside, and Tom Greytak came over to Cort, shook his hand and said, "Dr. Johnson, I believe?"