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I survived the viva. 'Survived' is what I mean. It was pretty awful. Let me give my account of what went on, for the benefit of those who might be preparing for their viva. A word of warning, though: this is my own subjective experience; I won't even try to be objective.

1. Prepare for the worst. You might be lucky and have an easy ride. I didn't. It's a good thing I was quite well prepared. Even though, I could have done more in terms of preparation. I felt that a summary of my thesis was indispensable. It took me weeks to prepare it. It was quite thorough - 36 pages long; it included references; I used bold, big fonts and highlighting to help me find things quickly in the exam. Yet, I could have had page numbers next to each bit of the summary. Examiners expected me to tell them on which page things were pretty quickly and it took me a few seconds and some help at times. The onus is on you to find things in the thesis. I for one was overwhelmed with the amount of material I was handling.

2. Grilling. What do I mean by 'the worst'? I mean grilling, for instance. In my case, it was relentless for about an hour (?) until I raised the white flag and they let up for a second. There were hardly any positive comments regarding my thesis other than 'the presentation is good'.

3. Exam. This is an exam. Be in no doubt. There was hardly any discussion of issues. I felt a huge power difference going on and little in terms of interaction. I had to justify the weaknesses of my work and that was that.

4. Sinking. At times I had this awful sinking feeling, especially at the beginning. My heart sank when right from the start basic foundations of my work were bombshelled. I felt there was no recovering from that. The examiners were... well, one of them was very unhappy with my work. No chance of winning her back. I just had to weather the storm.

5. Defence. We're usually told not to be defensive in the viva. I'd say be defensive when needed. Had I not been defensive in some places my result could have been much worse.

6. ¡Viva! Having said all this, I passed. With some corrections. In the end, I'm not sure whether the examiners took pity or I overreacted to their criticisms in the exam but my list of corrections is rather small. I hope I'll manage to get over some of the unpleasant bits I went through and rejoice in having passed soon.

7. Future. However, some of the criticisms make me even less confident about my future career in academia than I was to start with. I was hoping I could build on my findings and methodology in future studies but I'm not sure any more.

PS: If you'd like to find out more about my experience you can email me at cmontoro@me.com or DM @CarlosMontoro on Twitter.

PS2 Many many many good wishes to all!

Two days to go. Viva on Friday. Feeling OK but kind of numb. Woke up to snow this morning - peaceful. Memories of Finland. Back to prep. Best to all. Thank you for encouraging comments to an earlier post.

Preparing for my viva. It's on 7th Dec 2012. Excited!

Best of luck to all!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm having problems with the abstract to my thesis. There's some guidance here, in case any other PG student is having the same difficulties.

Best wishes.

*** Note: This blog post may be of interest mainly to PG students in the writing-up stages ***

I like the sound of this: "Final corrections". It means I have received feedback from my supervisors (in record time; how good of them) and I now have to make the final changes as suggested by them and submit.

My deadline to submit final version of the thesis is 31st Oct, but I'm planning to submit as early as possible before then. It's been recommended to me to avoid the last minute rush and deluge of submissions which could affect my exam date.

It's been so good to breathe for the last two weeks as my supervisors were getting through my final draft. But now it's time to make the final push in terms of writing up and then, time to prepare the viva carefully.

I'm really enjoying these final stages of the EdD. These are sunny days, after some dark spells left behind during the last three years.

Best wishes to all.

*** Note: This blog post may be of interest mainly to PG students in the writing-up stages ***

I apologise to anyone who might have been following my countdown to the submission of my final draft. It is unlikely but just in case.

I just put my head down and got on with the job. No time for distractions or much reflection.

But I come back having done most of the job. The thesis is finished now. Complete. I can say that for the first time. It keeps stubbornly at 70,000 words, so what's left in these last few days is chopping (down to the required 60,000 words) and fixing minor issues.

I feel much better about all the chapters now, including the first and the last, which kept me wondering last time I wrote. Feedback from my supervisors has been great in this regard.

And I managed to muster the energy and the motivation by doing exercise (running) in the last few days. It really helped.

Target is still submitting the final draft of the thesis next Tuesday 18th Sep 2012.

Best of luck to everyone.

*** Note: This blog post may be of interest mainly to PG students in the writing-up stages ***

I submitted PR 12 today. Next, it's the whole thing, the final draft, on 19th Sept.

I've only got a couple of weeks to fix a million things. Aaah! But I'll do it. Somehow I'll do it!

I'm not too happy with what I submitted today. It was chapter 8, conclusions. But I wanted my conclusions to be much more about the analysis and interpretation chapters, with some heavy artillery. It didn't turn out this way. I run out of time cutting down words and summarising all the previous articles and I couldn't complete everything in time.

Anyway, let's not think about that. The important thing is that I submit something better on 19th, and especially on 31st October, which is the final submission date, the definitive one.

Time to go to sleep now. I must increase my sleeping time and resume exercise to feel better about the whole things in this coming two weeks.

:/

*** Note: This blog post may be of interest mainly to PG students in the writing-up stages ***

Start of the day

Day 8. Not good. I was exhausted from not sleeping and translating into the small hours for the last two weeks. I couldn't really perform well. I was falling asleep. But I managed to do some chopping.

End of the day

Exhausted. Let's hope tomorrow is a better day.

Comments

Although I'm beginning to do some serious cuts to chapter 5 I am also beginning to worry that reducing the thesis to 60,000 might be harder than I thought.

*** Note: This blog post may be of interest mainly to PG students in the writing-up stages ***

Start of the day

Day 6. Still not getting much sleep (it was household chores yesterday that kept me up till 2am because my wife was preparing a job interview). But I'm feeling fine, thank God for the coffee. Today I had a message from one of my supervisors reminding me about deadlines. It was good to be forced to reflect on how little time I have left. I have to meet a 3rd Sept deadline to submit the whole thesis (including the now missing chapter 8: conclusions). And then meet a 17th Sept one to submit the final draft of the thesis. There are still a lot of changes to be made but I'm confident that I can meet both deadlines. It'll then be a question of waiting for feedback to come back from my supervisors and then making the final changes before submitting the thesis on 31st Oct (or earlier, if I can, to make sure my viva is arranged in time without any problems). I think I'll be increasingly relieved after meeting each of these three deadlines, but I'll be specially relieved once I've done my viva exam in December. Next Christmas might be a good one!

End of the day

I had to finish earlier today (12pm) because I have to take my wife to her job interview. But tomorrow I'd like to make a lot of progress with chapter 5 (finish it, perhaps) and continue with chapter 6 (Thu), chapter 7 (Fri) and chapter 8 (Sat and Sun) before submitting PR12 on Mon 3rd Sept.

Comments

Cut, cut, cut!

*** Note: This blog post may be of interest mainly to PG students in the writing-up stages ***

Start of the day

Day 4. That means I should be working on the massive 40,000-word long chapter 4. I will. But first, I must write the summary of chapter 3, the conclusion section.

End of the day

I realised I made a mistake in thinking that chapter 4 was the big analysis chapter. It isn't. Chapter 4 is the methodology chapter. It's quite well-written because it was recently completely rewritten, so there's little editing to do. But I have had to spend a long time fixing the format of tables and figures. I've decided to have any large figures or tables on a horizontal page and on one page only, not running on for several pages because it looks awful. But this means I'm having to cut down words and use 10pt font and single-spacing to achieve this. I hope the examiners don't mind. I haven't finished writing the summary of this chapter but it shouldn't take me long once the format is fixed. I'd love to have time to work on chapter 5, the analysis over the weekend but I'm afraid this won't be possible because I've got several translations and social commitments. Oh well... I'll do it on Monday.

Comments

Today I had an idea. Wouldn't it be nice to have a little piece of software where a PG student and the supervisors could track the changes suggested and made to the thesis? It wouldn't be an app because it has to be used on a big screen and typing a lot of text. But it could work for PC and Mac. Just an idea...

*** Note: This blog post may be of interest mainly to PG students in the writing-up stages ***

Start of the day

This is the start of Day 2 of my review work. I'm excited about the prospect of being able to submit my thesis before the deadline, as suggested by one of my supervisors. Let's plough on. It's chapter 2 today.

End of the day

I didn't manage to complete chapter 2 yesterday. I must catch up today.

Comments

I find it confusing that I've been suffering from a tendency to procrastinate and bouts of lethargy recently, especially this year. Somehow I find it hard to motivate myself. I'm not sure what it is. It could be the fear of actually having to face the conclusion of the doctorate. It could be the fact that my work has been so disrupted that I gave up thinking I could actually work on my thesis consistently and continually. It could be a bit of burn-out from having to deal with so many other responsibilities at the same time while having little time for fun things. I must make a point of doing 'fun' things every day, at least one a day, to break out of this unpleasant cycle.

 

 

*** Note: This blog post may be of interest mainly to PG students in the writing-up stages ***

Start of the day

This is the start of Day 2 of my review work. I'm excited about the prospect of being able to submit my thesis before the deadline, as suggested by one of my supervisors. Let's plough on. It's chapter 2 today.

End of the day

[pending]

Comments

I find it confusing that I've been suffering from a tendency to procrastinate and bouts of lethargy recently, especially this year. Somehow I find it hard to motivate myself. I'm not sure what it is. It could be the fear of actually having to face the conclusion of the doctorate. It could be the fact that my work has been so disrupted that I gave up thinking I could actually work on my thesis consistently and continually. It could be a bit of burn-out from having to deal with so many other responsibilities at the same time while having little time for fun things. I must make a point of doing 'fun' things every day, at least one a day, to break out of this unpleasant cycle.