Some schools and universities have traditions that they pass down from one batch to another.

This man talks about their school’s custom where the graduating student should be the one to organize his thesis defense.

This meant setting a date when all his professors were available and even providing them with coffee and snacks.

So, he happily obliged, but made sure that everyone in the room would give him a passing grade.

Read the story below and find out!

Schedule my thesis defense and provide refreshments for the committee? Sure thing!

Ages ago, I was finishing graduate school and was preparing to defend my PhD thesis.

My department had a ‘tradition.’

They are requiring the student to coordinate the schedules of 5 full professors to plan the event.

And to provide coffee and snacks.

Ok, I’m on it.

This man was almost certain that he would pass the course.

Quick backstory points:

I had more than a dozen publications, including a (smaller) number of first author.

So there was no way I wasn’t passing without scuttling my advisor’s and his colleague’s work as well.

He had to find a common schedule for all professors manually,

Department admins, with a few exceptions, considered students to be an impediment to their lives of gossip and sitting around.

So scheduling meant I needed to go to each one and get their professors’ schedules.

Then compare with all the others to find an available time.

Since electronic calendars were sci-fi at this moment in history (~mid-80s).

Thanks to his girlfriend, he discovered how to make exotic coffees.

Finally, as this was the mid-80’s, good coffee in the hinterlands of mid-American land grant universities was a rarity.

However, our lab was the go-to place to get coffee since I was the coffee-master.

This was no skill or knowledge of my own.

It was due to my then girlfriend (now wife, 40 years later).

Whose parents eloped to Europe and came back with all these weird ideas like ‘espresso’ and ‘garlic,’

A local co-op stocked various roasts and I had turned on the lab, and then the department.

He looked for a schedule before the Memorial Day weekend.

It is springtime, and the stage is set.

I trudge around to all the prof’s offices, getting their schedules.

The Memorial Day holiday is coming up soon, which marks the gap between spring and summer terms.

Prof’s want time off and I want out, so I obligingly look for a time before that.

His defense was set for Friday, 3:00 pm.

Their schedules had more openings than I expected.

But the only time I could find when they were all free was 3pm on the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend.

Since no-one cared to crosscheck, the date was on.

Friday rolls around, and I’m in a suit.

Girlfriend has baked rich, thick brownies, and there’s a steaming pot of Italian roast coffee at the back of the room.

Yeah, it’s decaf.

He then gave a long and boring presentation that lulled the professors to sleep.

I proceed to give the most deliberately tedious presentation of my work that I have ever done, before or since.

It was kind of cute, watching them get up and grab another cup of coffee, but to no avail.

I had three of them asleep in the first hour.

The committee’s “candidate out of the room” conversation may have set a record for speed.

I passed without objections.

I should have graduated with honors since one of them was snoring.

LOL! That was genius and funny.

Let’s find out what others have to say about this.

Well played, says this one.

This one offers a good suggestion.

This user agrees that it totally works.

But this one thinks otherwise.

And lastly, this one shares their defense story.

As they say, work smart, not hard!

It worked out for this guy.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.