Doctorate? Not so soon...

I've been in Singapore for the last 8.5 years, from end of 1998. I've been thankful for the free education I get from the Government to take up Mechanical and Production Engineering and then from the university to attempt for a doctorate degree. Well, I call it an attempt because although I have submitted my thesis, it might not have gone out to the external examiner. Therefore, it might not get examined yet.... even after having submitted it 2 months ago. The university requires my supervisor to furnish a details of 4 possible examiners, who are supposed to be better in research than him (my supervisor). It somehow seems hard to do so, well, depends on who he wants to get. Imagine having Stephen Hawking as your PhD's supervisor and he is supposed to find FOUR people better than him in cosmology. Honestly, this university of mine does seem to have a weird rule, so to speak. Fortunately, my supervisor is in no way even 1/100 of Hawking. Hehehe... but still, it seems to really take him forever to come out with that four names, even after he asked me to furnish him with the names, which I did, 2 months ago, once again. Therefore, my degree is still an attempt.

Ironically, even after one's thesis goes out to overseas for examination by the chosen two out of four examiners, the thesis will take roughly 8 months to a year before one gets back some sort of review. It does takes quite a long time to get a PhD degree in Singapore, at least in my university (rank 40++ in the world). After that review, one still need to "fix" the thesis and wait for a call for oral defense. Only after a pass oral defense then that one can have the degree.

Ah well, I still need to build up confidence for the degree. After all, people expects a doctor-to-be to produce journal papers, which I don't have. Having a half-hearted attempt in microbiology, as an engineer, does provide an uber big hole in possible publications. Submitted a paper to engineering journal, rejected and called not engineering enough, submitted another to science-based journal, rejected and called not science enough. I am waiting for a second review for my paper submitted to a microbiology journal. It tooks 7 months for the first review and it's already 8 months from my submission of reviewed draft. O my... science does take time, huh? How could one read for an UPDATED and HIGH-END scientific updates from journal if one's work take forever to be published or even rejected? I wonder...