I had my final assessment in my university today.
I can honestly say that I have not encountered this level of misconduct and personal attacks at me since 2020.
I had a Master's presentation today and as part of it, I produced a poster which stood out from all the surrounding ones (the others just used a generic template and were literally nothing special, or copied an internet template. Not a single poster caught my eye today the way one absolutely incredible one from 2025 did). People were walking past and getting interested and praising my poster.
Fast forward to my Master's presentation, one of the examiners kept asking (mostly irrelevant) questions every 3 seconds and then announced my presentation was 20 minutes instead of the 40 minutes it was supposed to be. In the end she conceded that it was her fault that I didn't even get to my main result, which was an application of a method never used in this area of research before.
I then had to hear the following things from her:
1) "You would have taken that to a conference?" (In reference to my poster)
2) Saying "Did you look at your poster at least once?"
3) Accusing me of "talking too much" and "taking too long"
4) Expressing completely unrestrained surprise I was going to do a PhD and repeatedly implying she felt I was no good for it.
5) Saying I couldn't answer questions slightly outside my project (factually incorrect- I answered everything and the high mark I got in the end appears consistent with this)
Her hostility was not consistent with the grade I got (very high, likely because of the second examiner), but her remarks were nevertheless extremely upsetting and, I felt, completely inappropriate and unprofessional.
I remained very quiet. I could have said that this poster design, out of hundreds of posters in Warwick, was one of only two selected to be presented in UK Parliament (and everyone loved it). I could have told her how her ideas about how unfitting I am for a PhD would have sat with my upcoming supervisers (two of the most famous and incredible astrophysicists worldwide, one of them with an h-index about 10 times as large as hers and the other a downright menacing professor with frighteningly huge contributions to multiple areas of astrophysics)- they would have simply laughed at her.
I could have said that me 'talking too much' and 'not being able to present' is inconsistent with me getting 3 offers from both Oxford and Cambridge in this one single year (two of them fully funded). I could have said and done a lot of things, and I am just really grateful for the second examiner giving me a global first in the end for my presentation.
I am considering reporting the first examiner's level of conduct to the Director of Studies, simply because those comments could have really hurt someone who was presenting with others in the room (the module leader forced mine to be done in a separate room).
