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Viva
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I did but have to say that I never looked at them at all! Neither did I open the thesis though I had brought that with me too!

My viva, I passed!
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I can't quite believe that I'm actually writing this but my viva was today and I passed with minor corrections.

If it will help people I will post again with details but for now I just want to say thanks to all on the forum for your help and support. I joined Christmas of my 3rd and final year and I honestly could not have done it without you all. I'm loathe to name names in case I miss somebody but suffice to say a special thanks to those of you with whom I am in regular contact :-x

I guess now I have
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sorry to say but based on my experience it gets worse. If Dalmatian can't stop eating, I am finding it hard to start:-(

I have just done something really silly - advice please...
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======= Date Modified 11 Jan 2012 08:07:15 =======
======= Date Modified 11 Jan 2012 08:06:55 =======
I'm a card carrying member of the 'I've just done something silly club'!

I agree with Pjlu and would contact them. The way I would approach it is email them the correct version, be brief, be briefly apologetic (don't call yourself an idiot in the email!) and put something like "Please find attached my draft introduction, including discussion of autoethnography. This supersedes version sent to you [date] - apologies for any confusion caused. Looking forward to discussing this with you. Best N" and then would leave it at that.

I wouldn't raise it in the meeting unless they do but even if they do, again briefly apologise but don't go overboard. We all make mistakes like that. I thought for one awful moment that I had submitted the 'track changes' version of my thesis (now that WOULD have been embarassing!!). Thankfully I didn't though:-)

Good luck with your meeting (up)

Post viva progress review!
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Hi Pineapple

I'm still pre viva (just about!) so no direct experience of progress reviews post viva but it sounds a good idea to me - you sound like you're on track for a great re-submission but still a progress review will ensure that your -re-submission is as tight as it can be.

Best of luck with it (gift)

How long to prepare for a viva?
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Hard to really suggest an alternative as there would always be the doubt if everything rested on the thesis that some people might submit a more 'collaborative' work. However, having read up on vivas recently they do seem to vary widely and wildly!!!

Thanks Olivia for reminding me it's an open book exam, I will do that if I get stuck (up)

How long to prepare for a viva?
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'Tips on how to prepare for a viva' @
http://www.booksie.com/other/article/wintom/tips-on-how-to-prepare-for-a-viva/nohead/pdf/ver/8

and Rowena Murray 'The Viva' @
http://www.research.stir.ac.uk/documents/SeminarNotes-VivaNotes.pdf

I'm giving a 10 minutes presentation at mine. I am using a laser pointer which makes me look much more efficient (lol) but
expect to be so nervous that the red dot will probably be shaking madly!

How long to prepare for a viva?
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Mine is much less than a month away and though I have been tipping away at it for a while I have really only seriously been prepping for the last seven days. I am having recurring nightmares that I will be asked something like "Jones, (2004), exactly what is his argument...?" Gulp, you mean I am supposed to remember something I read two years ago :-(

I know you said you were not going to read viva books Sneaks (and I am with you on that) but I found an online pdf link to Rowena Murray "The viva" very helpful as was a five page pdf "Tips on how to prepare for a viva" very good.

Good luck January vivaees(up)

I'm back... and struggling with my introduction chapter and a loss of confidence.
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Quote From clupea:

======= Date Modified 09 Jan 2012 09:24:45 =======
The problem with the message display happens when a website address or other text without spaces in one of the
messages runs longer than can fit on a single line. If you select and copy the text from the messages into
Word you can read them properly but you need to make sure you only select the text and not the whole cell
or it pastes as a very narrow column.


Ooops, sorry, looks like that was my fault. I had a link to 'Writing in plain english' in Google books in my post but I have removed it and the other posts seem to read okay now.

Thanks Clupea :-) - sorry everyone :$

Anyone else's PhD to be completed October '12?
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Yup, I would have been lost without the support from the 'summer submitters, let's do it together' thread even though technically (sic) October doesn't really constitute summer!!

good luck everyone getting to October 2012(up)

Disturbed and not sure what to do for the best
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I sent you pm Delta if I can help at all

Article (chapter) request
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======= Date Modified 05 Jan 2012 13:40:53 =======
No worries Joe

I saw the Roman Military Studies by Dabrowa and looked for that as well but no joy, I'm afraid:-(

Article (chapter) request
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Sorry, no could find although Electrum claims to be in an open access journal but only very recent material uploaded. Could be worth a shot contacting the editors direct - http://www.electrummagazine.com/

Other than that I picked up a discussion about it (admittedly from 9 years ago). Somebody else asked for a copy and one of the posters gives an email address - again could be worth a shot - http://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat.html?func=view&catid=17&id=32928&view=entrypage

Article request
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Hi Cakeman

Yup, I can get it for you; I'll email it to you - I have your address from before.

Anything to distract from viva prep:-(

I'm back... and struggling with my introduction chapter and a loss of confidence.
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======= Date Modified 09 Jan 2012 09:26:54 =======
Hi Natassia

Welcome back; I had noticed you had gone AWOL.

The others all give sound advice so I am not going to replicate what they have said but just wanted to say that a chronic lack of confidence sounds all too familiar to me at the moment. Feedback is difficult to get and difficult not to take it personally. I used to genuinely feel nervous when I had chapters emailed back to me. Also at times what was said and what was written down were not the same! Often though, once I had digested what was written it made sense, and yes as Olivia said, a lot of it was subjective and I disagreed with some of it although most of it was spot on!!

I am in the social sciences as well and although my intro is longer than 2000 words, the structure you outlined is pretty much what I have. Writing to a tight word count is a skill and it's easier to expand 2000 words to cut 15000 down. I got Legal writing in plain english on Olivia's recommendation. It is good and makes you feel "right, I can do this". A lot of it is up on Google books.

That being said, for me, the greatest help with reading was looking at other theses and seeing just how varied writing styles are. My supervisor and I didn't really agree on our different styles but agreed to differ!

Best of luck getting your intro chapter done by next week.