You should have been told the time limit in your viva. I was. I was given 1 month to submit my very minor corrections, in which time I had to do them and arrange and submit hard-bound copies.

University deadlines like 4 year ones tend to revolve around the time to submission. So long as you've submitted you're fine.

But find out about your correction time. Contact relevant people at your university to ask.

I got on with my corrections quickly. Until they were done I didn't consider I really had a PhD.

I quit a full-time funded PhD about 14 years ago. My reason was developing a progressive neurological illness, though I didn't realise at that time just how serious I was (I'd be rediagnosed a year later). But I knew I couldn't continue full-time, and my funding body would not support part-time study.

My decision was easy, though it was the hardest decision I'd ever made in my life. There was no way I could continue as things were, I knew I wasn't going to get any better (even if I didn't realise then just how seriouslyill I was), and the only sensible option was to pull out. Once I'd made that decision - sitting in the car overlooking the North Sea with my husband - I felt as if a weight had been lifted from my mind. I knew it was the right decision and never had any doubts.

I regret that I didn't tell my supervisor in person. I emailed him instead, and my husband (then a fellow PhD student in the same department) went to talk to him. But I could not set foot in that building again. It would have been heart breaking.

After I left my PhD I went through a grieving process. It was extremely painful. But I still knew I'd made the right decision.

I've since completed a part-time history PhD in a totally different discipline (humanities, compared with science in my full-time abandoned PhD), so have achieved my goal, even though I can't use this for work.

If I was you I'd have a frank conversation with your supervisor. Well that's what I wish I'd done. Well actually I did this, before I left, while we explored options. But he was still hoping my health would recover, when I knew - deep down - that it never would.

Good luck!

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I sailed through a Masters with Distinction, but when I started to write up my PhD thesis my supervisor was horrified with my writing. Basically it wasn't up to scratch, mostly due to structuring issues, and not linking together into a bigger argument. We were both rather mystified about why this was, given how easy I'd found everything up until then. Though I had always voiced concerns about stepping up to PhD level ...

By the time this cropped up my supervisor was nearly 500 miles away at another university, so I couldn't have face-to-face discussions with him about the problem. Instead he gave me very precise feedback about what was wrong, and what areas I needed to work on.

After a year of writing part-time I started from scratch again, working on the areas he had highlighted. And this time the feedback was much better. I kept working on it. And got through.

You definitely need more precise feedback from your supervisors about what is wrong. Saying just "Bad" isn't helpful! In what ways is it bad? How precisely can it be improved? So ask for this.

Good luck!

I was isolated throughout my whole 6-year PhD, as a part-time student off campus. I felt incredibly isolated. I also thought that my department wasn't doing enough to support its students at a distance. I'd have a good moan at them about it every year in my Thesis Monitoring Committee!

The only suggestion I can make is to stay in touch by other means, for example email. I had very good email contact with a fellow part-timer, and that helped a lot. As did this forum.

Rationale is surely the reason why you did the research.

Original contribution is what is new and exciting and original about what you found out.

So the first one is about the start of your PhD, the second about what you found out by the end.

I used EndNote to keep a record of what I'd read, together with my notes/summaries of what each book/paper was about. I was a humanities student, and only a small fraction of what I read was available in PDF form. So for lots of things I had photocopies. I have a filing cabinet just for these in my office/study at home.

I also used mind mapping techniques to figure out how to structure these in my literature survey. And, at times, even old fashioned index cards could be useful. Anything to get my brain working.

My literature review was very selective though. I covered a lot of material, but focused primarily on those most relevant to my research. I think it's important to be selective, not just thorough. Otherwise it can risk becoming a brain dump.

If you have a whole week to spare coming up you have plenty of time. I had just a few good hours in between submission and my viva.

I would strongly recommend reading a viva preparation book. I used Tinkler & Jackson. It demystifies the whole process and helps you get prepared.

I didn't tackle a long list of possible questions. It's likely few of them will come up. Instead I focused on 5 key questions: originality of my thesis, contribution to knowledge, methodology, weaknesses/gaps/mistakes, and what would I do differently if starting again. Between them those should cover most of the non-subject-specific things you're likely to be asked. This preparation takes incredibly little time.

In addition I reread and summarised my thesis to familiarise myself with it and spot typos (I took a list into my viva and handed it out - all examiners/convenor were very grateful). You're pretty much doing that already though.

I didn't have a mock viva. I didn't think it would help me, and only wanted to go through the eprocess once! But a member of staff kindly talked to me for about an hour about how vivas work. And my supervisor gave me good advice too.

Also I found it helpful to think 'Que Sera Sera'. That lifted the stress a lot. But to be honest the most helpful thing was reading Tinkler & Jackson. Very calming book!

Wouldn't EPSRC be the people to ask about this, in case their rules have changed? They *should* have up-to-date info on their website as well.

They'll probably ask you again. It was covered in my thesis too, but they asked it anyway. Asking why you chose the subject is a standard ice-breaker. And the examiners will expect you to be able to tell them what your contribution is, cos that's why you should get a PhD.

Personally I think they should be more than a yes/no answer, preferably at least a couple of sentences. But, as you say, you don't want to bore the examiners.

I wouldn't worry about it unduly though. They'll probably interrupt if they get bored. Also if they want you to say more about a specific topic than you initially do they can ask you for more.

Best probably to chill out and take it as it happens. If you talk for ages don't worry ;-)

BTW the why did you choose this topic was the first question in my viva. It's a pretty standard ice breaker. So well done on preparing for that one. I gave an initial answer, but mentioned the lack of research in this area, which one of my examiners then picked up on and asked me why I thought this was. So it turned out to be a multi-part answer. And a good settler in.

My viva preparation involved reading a viva preparation book (Tinkler and Jackson) to demystify the process, rereading and summarising my thesis to familiarise myself with it and spot typos (I took a list into the viva on the day and handed it out - all examiners/convenor were very grateful), and thinking about and memorising my answers to 5 key questions: originality of my thesis, contribution to knowledge, methodology, weaknesses/gaps/mistakes, and what would I do differently if starting again.

I had a very 'Que Sera Sera' attitude in the 7 weeks between submission and my viva. I expected to be primarily judged on my thesis, with the viva optionally swinging things if there was a marginal result. But I knew that winding myself up with nerves wouldn't do me any good at all. What would be would be. That made me feel vastly better :-)

That looks fine to me. Straight and to the point.

Ah another part-time student. Good luck for the final stretch and well done for sticking it out over 6 years!

I used an ancient version of Word, Word X for the Mac which was released, I think, in 2000. I had a lot of charts and graphs and other illustrations and tables. I didn't use wrap-around text for them, but just had them as stand-alone items. That worked well.

I manually did all my captions though. I started doing them using Word's caption facility, but it wasn't working very well after I while, so I did them by hand, including renumbering them at the final stage, and manually entering page numbers into the table of contents. But even that wasn't a big job.

I'd tone down that email too. Chuff's tips are really good. Above all don't antagonise your supervisor, but be professional and direct.