The Thesis (1) - Preparing to Defend

Part 1 in a 4 part series about my MA thesis

It’s been…a while…since I’ve posted anything on Substack. This is post one of a four part post on the end of my MA in Vietnamese Studies degree. This post is about setting up the actual defense. Then I want to write a bit about the emotions I’ve felt over the past year and a half writing the damn thing. Next I’ll write about what the actual project was (I’m most excited for this post). Finally, I’ll end with some notes about it all.

It’s been a weird few months — I left Hanoi at the end of 2024 and spent the beginning of 2025 back in Saigon. I was, to put it bluntly, pretty miserable. I was here for school things and visa things, and I just didn’t want to be here. I also got pretty sick (the flu, I think?) and spent a week unable to do anything.

Then I went to Dalat for two weeks and Nha Trang for a few days, which was very restorative. I spent time with friends and read nonstop. I went to Taipei for a bit (with a sidequest to Kaohsiung), did a trip to Mui Ne back in Vietnam, and then was in the US for something like 5 weeks seeing friends and family.

As I write this, it’s April 21. I’ve been back in Vietnam for a little over a week. It’s very hot outside.

It’s been nice, in one way, to have this independence and time to travel and visit people, but I have also been struggling with not having a sense of permancy of place. The constant movement. The constant change of schedule. I actually kind of hate traveling. I like being in new places, but the process getting there fills me with anxiety and dread.

Anyway, I’m back in Saigon, and I don’t exactly want to be here, but it’s okay. I’m almost finished my thesis. It’s almost time to defend.

So….how does one even register for a defense?

It starts, with paperwork.

Well, I’m kind of getting ahead of myself. It started with the prospectus, which feels like ages ago. And in a way it was. About a year and a half ago. I wrote about it here.

Since then, I’ve pretty much been on my own. I probably could have reached out to my advisor, but I had a pretty negative experience working with an advisor on a previous research project, and I prefer to just work alone anyway.

So I worked. Well, I procrastinated a lot. I felt a lot of negative feelings about…well…a lot of things, which I’ll write about separately.

But somehow I did write. In typical me fashion, I thought a lot about the topic, for months and months and months, and then the majority of actual writing happened October-November of last year (2024). This is not uncommon for how I write. A lot of my short fiction is written like this, putting nothing to paper except for odd notes or phrases for months (and sometimes years!) and then spilling out the entire story in a week.

Anyway, I wrote a lot in a short period of time. Then I took a break in December from it, took another look, edited, paid someone to copy-edit and format, and sent it to my advisor before Lunar New Year 2025.

My advisor and I met in person (only the second time we’ve met in person, lol) in January. I thought I probably should touch base after sending a draft. He was supportive and said what I’d written was pretty good. He even (kindly) reminded me that I was just doing an MA thesis, and I could take out the word “new” from my contributions section.

He sent me some edits. He uses highlighters in a way I don’t fully understand, so I responded as best I could. We went back and forth on a few drafts. I was in the US for a lot of this, visiting friends and family, which was great, but the thesis monster ate at me.

I reached out the department to start the process of scheduling a defense while in the US. It’s wild to me that I keep having to be the one that’s proactive in this whole process. Turns out I had to submit a bunch of documents and they needed to be submitted in person…so I couldn’t do it while I was in the US.

This is…eternally frustrating to me….like, I can’t be the only student reaching out to ask how to defend. I don’t understand why this whole process isn’t streamlined more, and why we didn’t have a seminar on how this all works…but steeping in the frustration gets me nowhere, so I (attempt to) move on. It sometimes makes me feel like the dumb foreign student who just doesn’t get how things work. Do my classmates know? I have no idea.

If I’ve learned anything from working and living and studying in Vietnam, people tend to not be super forthcoming with information. Like, a teacher won’t just give out a syllabus or tell you what to read for the next class (most of the time), but if you ask, they will give guidance. I really should have asked what documents needed to be submitted sooner (like, before my US trip). Because from submitting to defending is around a month. So this whole thing is delayed more. Anyway…

The moment I got back in Vietnam in early April, I stumbled up to school jet-lagged, and met with the department rep to get clarification on how this all works. I will say, despite my frustrations, she is very competent and very nice. She went one by one through all the documents I needed to submit and told me who/how I could get them filled out.

It’s a little different for each student, but here’s what I needed to submit.

1. Đơn xin bảo vệ luận văn có chữ ký đồng ý của cán bộ hướng dẫn (2 bản)

2. Đơn giải trình lý do bảo vệ luận văn trễ hạn kèm theo minh chứng (nếu trễ hạn 02 năm) (2 bản)

3. 02 LLKH có dán hình, đóng xấu xác nhận của cơ quan hoặc địa phương (theo mẫu)

4. 02 bản sao Bằng tốt nghiệp đại học (công chứng)

5. 03 bản luận văn (bìa mềm), hoặc file PDF luận văn (bản full)

6. Báo cáo kết quả trùng lặp dữ liệu của luận văn (kết quả chạy đạo văn tại Thư viện Trường)

7. Quyết định công nhận Học viên cao học và Quyết định Giao đề tài luận văn

8. Biên lai đóng học phí bảo vệ LV trễ hạn (nếu trễ hạn 2 năm, đóng học phí sau khi nộp hồ sơ)

The first is just an application to defend signed by my advisor. Easy enough to get. Number two is a document explaining why I didn’t defend on time. Technically my program ended spring of 2024, but we can extend for up to two years to write/defend, and as far as I can tell this is the norm. I don’t think anyone in my cohort has defended yet. This document was easy too.

Number three is a CV, but in this really particular format (provided by the school) with passport photos on it and a stamp from either work or my local People’s Committee office. I had to provide the exact same document when I applied for the school, so I’m unsure why they need a new one, and I really don’t love going to any government office in any country, so this one gave me the most anxiety.

This document was also easy to get. I truly don’t know how people navigate Vietnam not speaking Vietnamese, because even speaking Vietnamese I was unsure how this document worked or how to get it stamped or even where to get it. I went to the People’s Committee in D1 and they told me they technically could do it, but I should just go to the ward office, as that’s easier. So I went to the local ward in D2 where I’m staying for the moment, and 20,000 VND and one working day later, I had the document.

Number 4 is notarized copies of my undergrad diploma. I’m so glad I had the prescience that I would need this and have kept my original diploma with me across moves. The funny thing that happened is I got a copy notarized and when I showed it to the department rep, she stared at the gothic-looking font on my diploma and said, “This is English so it should be okay, but this font is so hard to read. Can you get it translated?” I didn’t want to, but another visit to the notary and 300k later, I had a translated copy.

Number 5 is 3 copies of my thesis (for the committee) and a PDF file. This has been frustrating just because going back and forth and back and forth over edits. Actually, if I’m being honest, it’s more like my advisor suggests something and I go along with it. In a different universe where I have more energy and want to prolong this process, I would have pushed back on some of his comments, but he’s been kind and generous with his time, and after all, it’s just an MA thesis, so I think I’ve been a very easy advisee.

(plot twist, I needed 6 copies…)

For number 6, I have to submit my documents to the library for them to check for plaigirism. This one is also annoying just because it can take up to 7 working days. Which means, well, I have to wait first for an agreement on a final copy from my advisor, then submit to the library, then wait again, then finally be able to apply to defend and then…wait another month. Bleh. I did a test draft in the library system for plaigirism, and I got flagged as 2% potentially plaigirised, so I should be a-ok.

I went ahead and paid extra to have the process done faster, and it was done in one day, but the email went to my spam…which I found out four days later…I’m…whatever…I don’t want to dwell on how annoying that is, that I could have submitted my documents last week, but here we are…

The dumb thing I recognize though is that my thesis, while written in Vietnamese, relies almost entirely on English-language resources, and while I would never plaigirise, I acknowledge that this software probably can’t actually check if I did or not.

Number 7 is just like…proof that I’m an MA student in good standing, I think (so probably checking I’ve paid my tuition, and checking I took the right classes). And it’s also a check that my topic was approved, which it was. I don’t have to get this. The department rep will. Yay.

Last but not least is the fee I’ll have to pay for defending late. I knew this fee existed, and I thought it was better to pay the fee than to stress myself out. This is all done after the defense.

It has not been fun getting all this together. I don’t know how you do it if you work. I had to keep going to the school or other government buildings to get stuff.

The first time I went to submit documents, the department rep pointed out some issues with my thesis. The first is legit and should be corrected. I forgot to put quotation marks around the word “cà phê” in my thesis title on my documents. And since the title we submit to the university when we apply to write our theses (like 1.5 years ago!!) must match the thesis title, this is a legit issue. Okay okay, that I can change.

Then they were going through my thesis and pointing out some formatting issues. This frustrated me because a lot of them were things my advisor had corrected in my thesis…my advisor is kind of important in the department so I used his rank a bit to be like, “Well, professor X told me to do this.”

The department rep got really quiet and said, “You know, he just looks at the content. He doesn’t really fix formatting. When you defend, the other teachers on the committee are going to point this out.”

To which I responded, “No worries. No thesis is perfect anyway, I expect comments and corrections.”

lol.

I remember when I did some other academic research with an abusive advisor, and I used to leave formatting issues on purpose. I found it gave a direction for them to target their abuse. Like, if there were super obvious errors, they would fixate on those instead of fixating on my personhood.

But also, yeah, like, it’s good enough. The name should be changed. But other than that…I don’t really care if it’s formatted 100% right until it’s off to the printer for the one that goes in the library. Also, if the format was so important, why didn’t the department send out a style guide? I asked to see anyone’s thesis so I could check my formatting and had to physically go to the school to view them. The department wouldn’t send me a PDF for copyright reasons, which yay that’s great, but nobody has cared about privacy or copyright the whole time I’ve been a student.

So anyway, I went ahead and fixed those issues and submitted my documents.

Now to wait on a defense date. I’ve been told it will be in a month or so.

Then to defend. Final edits after the defense…and then…if I’m not mistaken, I’ll be done.

I’m so ready to be done.

(a small update, I tried to submit on April 21, but there were issues with my paperwork (yay), so I didn’t actually get to submit until April 23)