Congratulations! It's a weird feeling when you've been building up and up to something and then wallop, it's happened and you have to absorb that fact and adjust your brain so that it's able to think about other things again. (During my MA I was terrible for sitting and re-reading essays I'd just submitted, just because they were still so much on my mind - even though on one level I was sick of the sight of them!)

Anyway, congrats again - you deserve to feel thoroughly smug!

CONGRATULATIONS rubyw!!!!!!
love satchi

Congratulations! It's so nice to hear of people making it to the end!(up):-)

Sorry it took me so long to join in, but MY HEARTIEST HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!

Hi... congrats... you did it. (up):-)

Fantastic news Dr W... lovely to know your viva went so well, and thanks on behalf of all of us for the tips...

What are your plans now, apart from catching up with what has been going on in the rest of the world for the past few years!?!?

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Wow, thanks everyone! :-)

Sleepyhead, on the assorted suggestions of the examiners and my supervisors, I'll have to get a couple of articles published as soon as I can. They agree that my thesis would work well as a book so I'll pursue that, and also we discussed a project with one of the London museums. I'm going to talk to various people who run some of the research centres here and see what emerging projects I might be able to slot into, and join a few staff research 'clusters'. I'll have a chat with the head of research too. Maybe our less than great recent RAE results will help me in a way, they might be more inclined to look for emerging researchers with fresh ideas, who knows! I'd imagine anyone who's just finished a PhD would be cheaper and keener to employ than existing research fellows who might have underperformed recently and not come up with the requisite outputs, depends on the extent of any forthcoming cull and cuts, I guess. Ooh, what a tough world we're entering, academia's not for the faint hearted, is it!

I think the admin takes ages to sort out after a viva, so I probably won't get my corrections officially for a few weeks at least, then it's 2 months to complete them. Until then, I'll catch up with life!
:-)

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============= Edited by a Moderator =============
Congratulation!!

Post Removed - Not Relevant-

Oh dear God...(ref post below)...

Oh dear, I've been congratulated by a spammer...

Mods, if you feel like editing that one, please do - it's been everywhere this weekend and they are such long posts too.

Hurray! Hurray! Well done Dr Ruby!

Sorry I'm so late on this one - had a manic few days, but...........Massive congratulations Dr Ruby - that is wonderful news, and thankyou so much for your detailed post! For those of us still to face it at some point its so useful to have a real idea of what is to come and how to handle it. I'm absolutely delighted for you! It must feel completely surreal for it all to be over so quickly

That's fantastic news Ruby - well done and congratualtions!

Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We (the rest of us) are going to be next!!!!!!!! (in 4 years time, I hope)

That sounds like an absolutely amazing experience, well done and congratulations!! I'm only an undergraduate and hoping to start a MSc this year, so the whole idea of a PhD and a viva is quite unreal to me at the moment...but its something I hope to do and so it really helps to read success stories, makes it seem a bit more possible!