The Expert Inside You with Dr. D. Anthony Miles
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:40:10]
One of the few people I’ve ever heard of who did not pass their defense. So once once they wrote their dissertation and they went to defend it, one of the few people I ever heard of, they didn’t pass. Told the committee, I’m ready to defend and the committee is like, no, we’ve got a few things to work on and the way that it work, the process is the student sends out and a I don’t know what you call it, an invitation or something like that. A student sends out a request for scheduling and the committee has a certain time to respond to it. They have to give them dates and everything. And so this process is the way it’s set up. But the way that it always works is the committee or the chair says, OK, let’s get your defense scheduled and then the student initiates the process. This student, he kept being told, I’m not ready, you’re not ready. Then he goes up in front of the people who told them he isn’t, that he wasn’t ready, defended. And they said you weren’t ready. Surprise, surprise. There is like, wow, that I’ve heard of two cases of my failing their defense that was one. And failing in America just means that you have to do the defense again. There’s three ways. The three outcomes for defense usually in America. Number one is you pass and you’re done. But we don’t want to talk to you don’t want to see any more. Congratulations. Stop. Right. That very, very rarely happens. Number two is you pass. We don’t need to talk to you anymore, but we want you to do X, Y and Z to the dissertation. We found a couple of things that you need. What conditions do it with your care or maybe let the committee see it again. But you’re not defending again. You passed. We just need to tweak a couple of things and move on. That’s what most everybody. And the third is. You failed, you actually have to defend again, and that just doesn’t happen hardly at all. Like I said, I know two people, the first guy and then the second person apparently had someone else writing her her dissertation for her the whole time. Oh, showed up. They were asking her the simple. She had the presentation. She could read the presentation because the same person probably the slides for. They asked the simplest questions and they thought, well, maybe she’s nervous. So they kept trying to get simpler and simpler and it became obvious that she didn’t know anything about this paper. He hadn’t even read his name, that she turned in. And one of the committee members jumped on the phone called the program chair says, you got to get over here. And it was all virtual. So she had to jump on the phone and everything in the program. Chair was telling me about this later on. And she was like, yeah, we had to we had to get the university involved in all sorts of things because it was clear that she just hadn’t done any of the work at all. So hopefully there’s no one listening to this at all, but but that tells you you should give you some assurance when you’re getting ready to defend if they invited you, defend your ready because the community doesn’t want you to fail. That looks bad on them. And they just have to do the work over again. So they don’t want you to fail. They want you to do it once and and pass either outright.
Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:43:10]
Yeah, I was at a defense and I saw I saw one failure in my career. I was out of the fence and it was a friend of mine. He was from Taiwan. Yeah. He invited his family, his wife, his mother, you know, had a cat defense catered. It was a big deal to my school. They had a special role for. Yeah, he’s been a group. Special group. You got up there defended. His one his committee members was a mathematician, I think he said, listen, what’s the stuff that I tell you to do? I don’t see that in here. And the chair looked at him and they looked at each other. He says, listen, I’m not signing off on this. And it was like a real uncomfortable moment of silence. And the chair came back you to go meet the room. So they the chair comes back and says, listen, at this time, Simon has not passed this defense. He’s got a little bit more work to do and we’ll let him come back. And he was crushed. He was crushed.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:44:13]
I got to wonder, though, how was that committee structure because again, that’s supposed to come out if if you were driving things forward and you’re saying, I don’t care, come hell or high water, I’m defending in April or whatever it might be. And you’re not ready in April. The committee tells you, listen, it may OK, you’ll be ready then. But we got to do these these three things. First, I don’t understand how this chair didn’t have to sign off from all of the committee members that should in the last thing before they they scheduled, as the chair said, is everybody good? We got this day. Everybody good with this dissertation. I don’t understand it the same way.
Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:44:51]
I felt the same way in a lot of people blame a chair for what some people said they could let them pass because he had a family. There was it was it was the work that much where they come and say, listen, we’ll pass you what conditions right now. He outright failed and the chair crazy. They should have talked to that committee member or Maysam. I don’t know. What would you do in a situation like that?
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:45:17]
I think there’s some blame to go around. I think the committee is a is a name then I don’t use on the podcasts and everybody should have done that. And so they kind of know how to handle them and strongarmed a little bit and said, OK, everything’s good. Right. You have any problems or concerns with this dissertation? We want to make sure that that we’ve done everything we need to do so that we’re passing this defense. And I would have been that if I was the chair, I would’ve been that straightforward about it. The chair maybe never had encountered this before because everybody just knows the rules and knows how to be polite. But right. People are polite and sometimes they’ll do whatever is in their power to do, even though they have no business doing it.
Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:45:58]
Was the bad part about that is I wasn’t there. My friend told me about it. And the other guy, the other committee member that was giving him a hard time was an Asian professor. And he was on his case like really bad. And I was like, wow, you got to do the like.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:46:14]
Well, I wonder sometimes what all the closely you see that some. Yeah. With with underrepresented. You see the black professor being really hard on the black kid because you got to pull twice your weight.
Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:46:25]
I see that all the time with it.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:46:28]
But you understand where it’s coming from.
Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:46:31]
Yeah, if I was a chair in that situation, I would have passed them with conditions and I won’t allow that committee member to grandstand like that because that to me was grandstand.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:46:42]
Yeah, no, this could have easily been handled before. So unless this committee member was expressing that frustration over and over and over again and nobody was listening, it certainly doesn’t sound like he has any compunction standing up and saying what’s on his mind. So he could have done that in a committee setting before this thing was scheduled. Yeah, it’s that’s really.
Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:47:03]
I felt really bad for him. He was a good friend of mine, and I was at another defense if you to hear a quick war start. Dr Strickland had a guy. He should have pretty slides went through the song and dance. He had a little. Yeah, three statistician’s in the room, OK? Yeah, so one of them says, well, hold up. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Did you do a convenience yourself or did you do a random sample and the guy didn’t know what a convenient sample was? He started stammering. A guy says you don’t know what a convenience sample is. And it got so bad, I actually got up and left my friend State and she said it was worse after I left, she said of statistician’s were eating him alive. Oh, my God, they were killing them. He was turning red in the chair he based. He got a mercy pass. You know what that is, right? What was the degree program? I was in business leadership.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:48:05]
I don’t know why those guys were there, because it’s not a static statistics program. He doesn’t have to know all that stuff. Certainly a convenient sample is something you would expect to know. So I know different universities look at a different way. Some of them look at the old school defense. It was really a defense. And these were the guardians of the academia. And you had to knock them over to get through. I had know war stories. I had one of those when I was at the University of Chicago. Our our big the the big trial by fire. There is the what do they call it, the candidacy exam, I think they called it. I don’t remember what the word was used, but but this qualifying exam period, OK, so we did a full, full day long written test on everything. And I mean, the professors would it was part of the lore, the the culture in the department. Professors would routinely tell folks, listen, none of the professors can pass this candidacy exam. Because it goes deep in like everybody’s area or in a lot of different areas at least, and we go deep in our area, but the students know all this stuff, they said we will legitimately come in there and ask you questions that we want to know the answer to over the summer, because we know that we could either find the right guy down the hall somewhere or we could just go to the first years and ask them because they know everything getting ready for this. Right. So that was the way they did. It was a lot of pressure. It was a lot of pressure. And so you take the exam, you do the best you can do. Obviously, you were getting completely beaten up because everybody’s giving you their their best shot and they’re all world renowned people. So. Well, you have to do is you have to know what stuff did you get. Right. And it’s just done and you don’t have to worry about any more. And where did you have problems? And you have to know this. And then you go study the next week on anything that you didn’t know, because the next week is when you have oral exams and exams. That’s when they’re up there beating you up over the stuff that you that you got wrong, so to speak. And and so I knew where I messed up. I mean, I had had it ready. And one of the nice women who always treated fairly young, she was very, very friendly to all of the students all the time. She asked me the question about she started digging in with, like Marathon Man. If you know that scene where the guy was digging into the cavity, the guy’s tooth with a hook, and then he’d give him a little bit of oil, then go back and forth. She got the hook. And I was like, OK, I got this. And I did my little song and dance. I said, that’s it. And she’s over here on this side. And she says, OK, well, I’m satisfied before my heart could even beat again. Guy on the other side says, Well, I’m not. And I’m like, OK, what’s going on is one. He always he asked me another follow up question and I’m sitting here thinking in my head, this is it. I got to leave. I got to go home. I’m not going to be allowed to stick around anymore. Wait a minute. I understand what he’s talking about. I know what he means. I can answer that question. And then I answered it him. But I remember thinking in that series of steps between that’s it, I failed. I’m going home to wait. I know what I’m talking about here. And and as soon as I told him that, he’s like, OK, I’m satisfied now. And that was exactly what he wanted, was, you know, Mike Tyson said everybody’s got a plan until you get punched in the mouth or something like that. Exactly. That’s exactly what we want, because as a professional, at some point you can get punched in the mouth and you need to be able to stand there and take it and deal with it appropriately. You know, if you don’t know the answer, say you don’t know the answer and then tell them how we can find out the answer together or how I can look it up and get back to you or whatever the case might be in that exam. I don’t know if I didn’t know the answer was the outcome would have been. But I do know that if I didn’t know the answer, I would I would have told them I don’t know. And then they might have said, well, go through it, can we talk through it together? And they might have seen could they lead me along and me pick up the stream and do enough? Or they might have said, well, if you don’t know leave. I don’t know what the outcome would have been. But I do know that if you don’t know the answer, that’s what I have to say.
Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:52:15]
I love what you said there, because the dissertation defense is the truth. The other part of the truth and what that means is it’s not about the question. They want to see how you answer it. Yeah. Do you know how to pivot? You know, a lot of students are not a pivot. Like here’s an example. If you did a study on apples and I ask you about all just yet about fruit, right? Yeah, but oranges has nothing to do with apples. I want to see how you answer the question. So what you’re supposed to say is not such and such? That’s an interesting question. However, I’ll be a good future study, a lot of effort for me to work on. And then you got to what pivot. However, Milonov very focused on this particular area, and that’s probably why I’m stronger. But I will consider that as a future line of study. But how long did it take you to learn that?
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:53:07]
Well, so there’s another thing you can do. So you say, I don’t know because there is no shame in that game. One of the things I was at the University of Chicago is, listen, it’s not OK to know nothing. If you’re going to be an expert, you’ve got to know. But. Right. Nobody knows everything, so you don’t know. And that’s fine. Half the time it might ask you a question in that academic circle. It’s because they want to get up and start pontificating on their own study, on their own work. And so they know that they just want to start talking. But but the other thing you can do is when you say, well, I don’t know, maybe we could think about it in this way, you’ve made it very clear that you are not giving them the right answer. You don’t know you could you’re going to think through it with them because you want to be respectful to their question and give them a process. They can help figure it out. Maybe maybe you can help them get the answer to that question. And then ultimately they can come back and say, well, I actually know the answer. They probably won’t say it like that. But they’ll they’ll come back with their two cents. And you can have a conversation that way if you want to, or you can cut it short at some point, say, well, I can look into that and get back to you. Those are all things that you can do. And I think it’s great to be able to say let’s let’s just start jamming on this thing with let’s freestyle and see where it goes. But you can’t do that without telling the person unequivocally. I don’t know. But let’s think about it. Let’s talk through it. Then you can you can start doing that. What the problem is, a lot of folks will try to do that before saying, I don’t know, they’ll just start saying whatever comes to mind. And and that’s not exactly that’s not good at all.
Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:54:45]
You actually have something to Strickland. Here’s one of the things is that’s what’s important. You should attend defenses, especially your department and the committee members that you have, because you kind of know the field of they the last question. And that’s why you always want to attend defenses. You should, at least by the time you graduate at least ten or fifteen defenses, because I have all the time in your department. And when you see how your your posture supposed to be right. What the committee members are going to ask you that actually helps you step up your game because you know what you need to do.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:55:19]
And it’s it’s almost like going to you, you know, if the very, very first time you stepped into the batter’s box was against some sort of Cy Young Award winning pitcher in the World Series, chances are you’re not very good, not not do very well at all. But if you’ve practiced if you’ve seen it before, if you’ve gotten in the batter’s box and seen these guys throwing, you know how fast it goes, then you’ve got a sense as to what it’s like. Exactly. And that’s the thing. I mean, they say in baseball, you know, well, let’s see how a guy does. But the third deck on because minor leagues, I have like one or two decks get to the major leagues, they got a third deck and all of a sudden there’s all these people looking at you. Forty thousand people at a game. How do you handle that pressure? Well, the very first time, maybe not so well, but after a few times, you’re used to that. And so going out there and seeing what different defenses are like, maybe getting somebody who is going to to not be an easy committee member for a student, see what that process is like, is helpful for you. When you face it yourself, you’ll have a little bit of experience. You will seen it before.
Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:56:26]
Absolutely, and I also want to piggyback on what you just said, you should also go to all the universities and attend offense’s because you’ve got to creep up on somebody that did a bad defense and how you should have led to make sure you don’t do that, because a lot of students, we have to get out of our comfort zone. Yeah, I attended offense’s at my school, but you should go to other schools. I mean, you know, make it a part of your journey as part of your training. I want to see how people handle defenses and what’s different styles of answering questions. And I’ll be a tremendous help to you.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:56:58]
And a lot of universities, a lot of students who are doing this as adults now, their universities, their experience is virtual, the defense becomes virtual. And those defenses, they are publicized in the same way, but still mostly universities, because those defenses and their archives, so that if you want to, you can go out there and find them. So ask folks at your university about it, because it is something that you can do to to get to witness the defense, even though you’re not attending it. You can see it later. You can listen to it later, that sort of thing.
Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:57:29]
Oh, that makes you a stronger candidate when you’ve got it, you’ve already seen. Sandra, thanks. Our students handled themselves and it’ll give you a lot more confidence. Yeah. You know, I’ve seen students never attended a defense and a scare.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:57:46]
Well, as I work with a lot of students who know the way the university is set up, it’s hard to get to a defense until it’s yours. And I have to keep telling them, listen, you’re ready for this because they don’t necessarily believe it. They don’t know exactly what it’s what it’s like. But talking about pivot, we can go on like this, I’m sure, all day. I want to talk a little bit about what you’ve done since school, because I know there’s a lot of interesting stuff there and and some things that are really important to folks who graduated recently, even if you haven’t graduated recently, if you want to be in the expert game, if you’re out there in business for yourself, if you’re an entrepreneur, even if you don’t consider yourself an entrepreneur, maybe you’re a counselor or a coach or something. You think I’m not an entrepreneur? Well, number one, you are. But number two, if you’re in that expert game, what have you got for for folks there? Tell us a little bit about how you went from school to doing what you’re doing now.
Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:58:40]
Oh, absolutely. When I graduated from school, I actually started from zero, and the first thing I want to do is build my consulting practice. It’s there that I got my doctor and you see all the dots connect, so I want to get a legal expert witness field and I said, OK, I have my doctorate in entrepreneurship. What I do with that, where I said, OK, so I started looking up people that are expert witnesses and I started looking at different fields. And the field is so vast. You have people that do insurance claims. There are people that do forensic accounting, things of that sort of someone’s munipulating financials. So I said, OK, if I’m going to do this, why don’t I pick three areas that are problems in the field of entrepreneurship and build my expertise around them and position myself to be an expert in three particular areas? You could do that in any field.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:59:36]
Right. And that’s important because for folks who aren’t aware of this, you don’t want to if you’re going to be an expert, you don’t want to be a generalist. You want to have the correct niche. You want to be in a niche so that there’s if anybody wants exactly what you do, you become the obvious choice. And most niches, although they might be small there, there’s a need for that. There’s a demand for them. And so if you want it to be just a general expert witness, well, nobody’s going to come calling for an expert witness. But if somebody wants to go about, you know, someone’s cooking the books or something like that and that wrote the book on it or you’re doing media appearances on it or something like that, you become the obvious choice.
