Reading statsman’s thread reminded me: I submitted my PhD thesis this week. Three years of my life finally submitted. My viva is in October. I’m not really sure what should do now (feel a little bit of a loose end). I have plenty of work I can do, but can’t summon the energy to actually get on and do it properly.
Doctors, feel free to tell me good things about your examination.
You’re going to be asked questions about the subject you know best in the world, and most of the people asking you the questions want you to do well. You will.
For those who don’t use the term, the “viva” is the oral presentation/examination at the end of grad school. Often called the “defense”.
I skipped mine.
You don’t know what to do? I’ll give you the same advice that my supervisor gave me when I submitted mine. Take a well deserved break, and do nothing whatsoever for at least a week; then travel somewhere nice. Do not in any way whatsoever open your thesis because you’ll find lots of little mistakes that you wished you fixed before submitting.
He also told me something similar to what prr said: you are the biggest expert in your topic in the world, as nobody did the same exact thing; the examiners will ask questions because they are interested in your work, not because they want to put you on trial.
You’ve made it this far without cracking up! Hold on a little longer !
Good luck and take a deep breath!
I’ve decided that if I ever went back to school for my PhD ( I need all the other junk too) I would research Dust Bunnies and where they come from and the rate the multiply.
I defended mine about two months ago. They will keep asking you questions until you don’t know the answer to something. Then they will keep asking you questions until you can’t figure the answers out on the spot. Ideally you will be well into “future work” by the time this happens.
Recommendations:
Schedule it for after lunch and have a lot of coffee on hand. Committee members who are full and need to pee are much less likely to stretch out a painful questioning period.
Let them argue with each other. Professors love to argue with each other about things you don’t care about and were not a part of your research. Let them do this to their heart’s content.
Good luck, and remember that if your advisor thinks you are ready to defend, you are pretty much guaranteed to pass.
I don’t know your subject or how your viva works exactly. But let me prepare you for a potential scenario. At my grad school, the defense committee was required to consist of 5 members (my advisor, two professors from the department, one professor from the university not in the deparment, and one professor from another university). The last two are to verify that the thesis and defense are at a quality befitting the university. But who can you get to do a random thesis read and defense with which they have no connection? Answer: non-tenured professors who would like to impress other people on the committee who would probably be on their tenure committee or perhaps write a letter for them in the future. Those last two assistant professors scoured my thesis and asked the most impossible theoretical questions in order to impress the other committee members; whereas the senior/emeritus professor on my committee asked only the last three questions of the defense. “Back in the 60s, the army needed to test … Do you have a suggestion about how they should do it? How could you improve sensitivity? What other methods would you investigate if that one failed?” It made for a very, very stressful meeting with a great up at the end, but it was clear that the committee knew what was happening. So my warning to you, don’t let the “politics” in the room mess with you. It is a good sign that things are going well.
Secondly, this bears repeating, because its the best way to deal with the post-thesis submission slump:
Thirdly, hope and pray that your viva doesn’t go like mine – both of my examiners were reasonably new to the whole “being a viva examiner” lark, and decided to go through my thesis paragraph by paragraph, plot by fracking plot, getting me to explain everything. Took the best part of 4 hours. :eek: I passed with minor corrections at the end of that four hours, but geeze!
I will be trying not to do that later this year, when I’m someone’s external examiner!
Congrats! I don’t know about the UK, but in the U.S. unless your thesis totally sucks your viva/defense is actually pretty fun: you know the topic better than everyone else in the room (except your advisor), and it’s a suitable finale to years of hard labor.
Plus, at the end of it, the sense of relief and accomplishment is indescribable.
Congratulations! I don’t think I’ll ever be getting my B.A., much less a doctorate, but I have nothing but respect for people who have the drive and commitment to keep at something that long. I appreciate that there are people like you in the world, to do the intellectual heavy-lifting from which us dilettantes can benefit.
Congrats, CSRP…turning in my dissertation felt like a two-ton weight lifted from my shoulders, even if I still had the viva to look forward to. You must be feeling a bit of that yourself.
That’s what I had about 300 years ago. It was pretty low-key and not at all high-pressure. I’d already left university and been in a “proper job” for 18 months or so. If I hadn’t worked for a generous boss who gave me paid time off to write my thesis (in a subject utterly unrelated to my job), I doubt I would ever have done so. The viva was the easy bit.