Tonight was the thesis defense of a student hoping to graduate. It wasn't exactly what I thought it was going to be. They were very strict about the start and end time. doors were locked at 5:30 sharp and it was ended promptly, and in mid sentence, 50 minutes later. Then, everyone present voted on whether or not she had successfully defended her thesis. People asked some good questions but I'm not sure if they were challenging enough. Or rather I think some of her responses could have been challenged. I held back, myself, because some of my objections were, as usual, part of a larger cultural commentary and didn't really have a place there. I also tried to remember that she may be ready to act as an effective adult in larger society but she is still a young adult.
She chose to present her thesis in a non linear form with an accompanying website. The website was well done but I think it covered up some of the flaws in her thesis. She chose to break up the topic into an introduction, different qualities that make an effective adult (independence,responsibility, etc.) and a conclusion but each passage felt skimpier to me than if it had been part of a larger body. The strength of her work was that she was able to show what she had gotten from her time at Sudbury and from the process of preparing her thesis. I'm not including a link to her website because I really don't like to use the names of other people at the school besides my own family.
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