======= Date Modified 02 Jun 2009 11:29:34 =======
Hey guys, good luck armendaf for your viva preperation! battle on soldier!!!

well i sent a 3rd email to my sup on sunday night (previous 2 emails asking about my viva were ignored, he ignored this 3rd one aswell) and i also CC'd the admin people and one of the professers at my uni that deals with post graduate studies again, and i've finally got a reply!!

the prof was the only one that replied to my email yesterday, asking me when i handed in my thesis.

so i'm suspecting now he will deal with my sup and ask him what's going on regarding my viva. my sup will probably try to blame me. say that I asked for extra time to prepare for my viva, which is true. and say i'm not prepared (true again) but i still want to know "when" my viva will likely to be and "who" will be my examiners, so i can start reading their work.

anyways feeling abit nervous about whats going to happen next!

in the meantime i will just carry on trying to prepare. i feel like i will never ever be ready. got mountains of papers to read and still gotta read through my thesis again. and i still havent written answers for a list of viva questions i have. i better get cracking on it all, now that the ball of viva organisation has been let loose!! i probably dont have much time left for my viva now.

i'm going on a mini holiday this thursday for a few days to north cornwall with a bunch of friends. so gonna study today and tommorow, then take a few days off, and then next week, really start cramming big time.

a part of me, wants loads of time to prepare for my viva, but another part of me thinks, what the heck - might aswell just get it over and done with and see what my examiners say about my thesis. and take the next step. maybe they might give me a 2nd chance and tell me my thesis needs major corrections and talk me through what i can improve on, instead of just outright failing me.

oh well i guess its better than staying in limbo land forever.

Hey Lara, just of of interest, how are you supporting yourself? do you have a job? I was just wondering how you manage to spend so much time preparing for your viva! I would think that putting it off indefinitely must be hampering you moving forward with your career?

======= Date Modified 02 Jun 2009 13:49:52 =======
I really hope you get a viva date soon, Lara. Must be very frustrating not knowing.

I'm no expert on vivas having never got that far, so perhaps you might want to disregard what I'm about to say. But I notice that you seem to be putting a lot of emphasis on reading papers. It's very important to know the literature well, but I'd be inclined to suggest maybe you should spend a little more time reading your thesis. It's your thesis that you will be defending, not the wider literature, so you need to be intimately acquainted with its key points, as well as its weaknesses (not in an 'I'm not worthy' kind of way, but in a 'this is how my work could be strengthened if I had the opportunity to do further experiments' kind of way.)

My boss says one of his favourite questions to ask when he is examining is to find a data table somewhere in the thesis, point to a number and say 'Tell me how you got to this number' i.e. what was the research process that got you to this point? Being comfortable with the wider literature is essential, but confidently presenting and navigating your own research is crucial.

It's really good to hear that you're working through a list of potential questions you might be asked. One other thing I would suggest is getting other people to suggest potential questions to you e.g. friends who have also read your thesis, or your supervisor(s) if you can get any support from them. Everyone looks at things differently, and they might come up with something that you hadn't thought of.

I'm inclined to agree with Hazyjane about the balance between paper reading and thesis reading. The thesis should be the core focus, and indeed this is how many people can prepare in a very short time. Too much paper reading is likely to distract from what should be the core focus, and weaken its presentation, rather than help. Revising viva questions is a good strategy, but shouldn't take that long.

Mind you I'm not at the viva preparation stage yet, but it's becoming more paramount as I near the end of the thesis.

Also, don't be harsh on yourself about not knowing enough of the literature. You cannot know everything - the only reason senior academics appear to is (i) they have had more years on the planet to take it all in and (ii) they are probably more adept at bluffing/thinking on their feet!

If you have a mountain of papers, all of which seems to relate to your work, try prioritising them e.g. read the most cited/ones with the biggest names in your field. It's not a foolproof strategy and that's not to say there isn't value in the less cited/less known author papers, but if you need to find a way of whittling it down, that might be it.

I know the core literature in my area but due to brain damage and neurological disease have trouble remembering much that I've read, including much of the extra material. So that's going to have to be taken into account at my viva. I'm focusing on getting the thesis under my control though. That's my baby, I know it as well as I can know anything else, and I sure as wotsit am going to defend it to the best of my ability ;-)

======= Date Modified 03 Jun 2009 18:34:44 =======
Hi,

I started writing my dissertation about a month ago. I don't do it full-time so that I don't get bored with it, and in the meantime I can work on other papers. Besides, I have to travel abroad and prepare some presentations and live demos of my work that sometimes keep me away from writing during several days. I am supposed to defend my thesis by the end of September, which will make me submit my dissertation before Aug. 1st (French procedure...).

My adviser told me to write at least 2 pages every day. I try to stick with this goal, and so far it worked quite well. No matter how long I procrastinate before writing anything, no matter how slowly words come out of my keyboard, I do not leave my office before my pdf file is longer than the day before by at least 2 pages.

At first I took a scratch document, put all the chapter and section titles (2 pages per chapter), a table of contents (two more pages), and ended up with 19 pages of (almost) blank pages. Then I started writing my at-least-two-pages on daily basis, which appeared to be more 3 to 5 pages a day. I write until I am bored with writing.

Two weeks ago I submitted a chapter to my adviser. He reviewed it, and explained me that my writing method was wrong. Then he spent a lot of time with me reviewing the successive drafts I sent him, reading the improvements, helping me through this iterative process. I have to say that I am very lucky on that point. While I was working on this chapter the page count did not increase a lot, since I was mostly re-writing sections and re-arranging the order of some paragraphs.

A couple of days ago I started working on another chapter. Today I have 71 pages.

Sounds like you've got a good system Kmille. Only having to write a modest number of good pages a day is an achievable goal, and if that will take you to the end in time then brilliant. Re page counts I wrote my chapters separately, in different Word files, and only joined them together into a combined file last week. It was quite a big moment, scary to see the total word count (which did come in at the figure I was hoping for), and nice to see the total page count. I still have a bit more research to finish, and another 5000 words from that to plug in, but I'm definitely on the home straight now.

My official university deadline is 10 months away though, and I'm part-time so I have time to play with. And I started writing early. I found the writing very hard and my supervisor was very scathing initially in his comments. But I got through that. It's good that your supervisor is working so actively with you to improve the chapters as you write.

Hello there!

Lara and Armendaf, hope your work's going ok.

Lara, I'd agree with Hazyjane and Bilbobaggins about the revision. I started getting freaked out about how much I didn't know, but settled down to revising what I'd actually written and why in as much depth as I could. My sup specifically told me not to go off reading new stuff, but I did think about other work I could have cited instead of the ones I'd chosen, why I used them and not others, who else had done work in that area that I could name drop etc. I didn't use any of that in the end, but I felt I did know what I'd written, why the weaknesses were there and how they could be remedied in further research but didn't fit into that thesis remit.

Good luck with it anyway, do you reckon you're looking at a September viva now?

Armendaf good luck with your viva, you'll be ok, I'm sure! (up)

Thanks for the congratulations too, both of you!!! My computer died a few weeks ago so I've had an enforced break from a lot of online stuff including this forum. I am SO lucky it happened after the viva, but have yet to check how great all my backups have been to date.... Apparently I'm looking more human again now, I haven't had the official letter with the corrections details yet. I think it's going through the committee next week, so until then I will carry on being normal until I am forced to read my thesis once again!

======= Date Modified 03 Jun 2009 14:14:13 =======
Thanks Ju-Ju, Hazyjane, Bilbobaggins and Ruby for your really helpful advice and support really appreciate it!!

Ju -Ju - Thanks Ju-ju. well when my phd funding ran out, i worked just over a year as a RA and i saved up my money, and i'm just being careful with money..just living a simple life at the moment :)
nope its not affecting my career really, but i would eventually like to move on from this whole phd thing, its like having a constant cloud over your head. i'm still not decided what i actually want to do , to be honest. but would be nice to get out there and see whats out there in the world that i would enjoy doing.

Thanks Hazyjane. hmmm are you , who i think you are??? (wink wink) i mean, do i know you?
yeh it is abit scary not knowing when my viva date is, i'm on edge, thinking it can be anytime!
you're right , i should put more focus on my own thesis. i will start to do that :)
thanks for the tip about what your boss said, thats good advice.
thanks again for your help

Bilbobaggins, - WOW i really admire you, what with your adversities, you really are an inspiration. Thank you so much for your advice , its very helpful indeed!

Hey Ruby, sooo lovely to hear from you!!! Thanks for your advice, that is really good to know, you’re so right.

my sup didnt reply to my email (3rd attempt at emailing him). but this time, a prof from my own uni that deals with post graduate stuff, did reply and asked me when i handed in my thesis. i told him 30th october 2008, and how i havent heard anything about who my examiners are, and when my viva might be, or heard from my supervisor, so feeling abit concerned.

So the prof just replied again today and told me he understands my concern and he has followed it up and will update me asap. So now feeling abit nervous that my viva could be very soon! Yikes!! but also grateful that i finally have gotten a response from someone!!

Im not sure Ruby when it will be, senate house told me when examiners are given the thesis, the minimum time they are given is 3 weeks to read through a thesis, and maximum is like a few months i think. So i’m guessing my viva could be anytime from july 1st onwards. So i am hoping i still have one month left to fully prepare for my viva. in a way i think it will be good for it not to drag on too long, i'm already finding that i am forgetting what i did! it seems like such a long time ago that i wrote my thesis. i need to read through my thesis again. i did read through it a couple of months ago, but need to go through it again.

I’m going to cornwall tomorrow for a few days with some friends, for a mini holiday. im really looking forward to that :) But im taking my discussion sections from each chapter with me, so i can do some studying, will wake up early before everyone else and get in at least an hours worth or something.

I find that if i go a few days without studying, i lose my momentum and focus. and then its really hard for me to get back into studying mode again.

Thanks again everyone for your support and advice. You all are brilliant!

Kmille, welcome to the thread! sounds like you are working well on your thesis, great job! keep going :)

Armendaf good luck for your viva!!!!! (up)

Lara, I handed my thesis in on 30th October 2008. I had my viva in Feb. Waiting until now is unreasonable. We have a 12 week cut-off point for examiners to set a date after submission. You've waited 6 months - that's not normal by anyone's book. You must get some official response.

Yes, Lara, I think I am who you think I am!

(Which is why I'm not surprised you've been frustrated in your attempts to get a viva date. Glad somebody's finally answering you!)

Thank you guys for your support!

My progress report for today and yesterday: I finished to write the "basics" of this chapter, where I explain what the problem is, why it is important, why previous attempts to tackle it failed, what my approach is, why it is better than all the previous ones, and how I will save the world ;)

Now "all" I have to do on this chapter is to present the results. I have 82 pages now. I wrote 7 pages today and 5 pages yesterday.

I was hoping I could finish it by the end of this week, but I think is will not make it.

======= Date Modified 05 Jun 2009 16:01:04 =======
============= Edited by a Moderator =============
Content removed - irrelevant & advertising.

I traveled last week so I could not write much... however airports are so boring that you can write to kill time!

So I wrote 8 pages, to get a total of 94 pages.

My adviser is quite depressed because now he will have to read this and give me some feedback. So I stopped writing now.

He also told me that the default style that comes with the LaTeX book environment is nto the one I should use. A friend of mine gave me his style sheet, which enlarges margins etc. So the total dropped to 78 pages.