I am considering buying this book when I get back to the UK next weekend (being home now).
I am also considering having a mock viva. My sup usually does it one day before the real thing which will not help me a lot now.
One day I heard part of a mock viva for a friend as my office is next door to my sup's office and they were talking loud. But hearing is not like doing it urself.

Thanx Bilbo

ps how's ur preparation going?

My preparation's going ok thanks. I've started rereading my thesis, summarising it in the way that Phillips and Pugh recommend in their PhD book, so I can take in a few pages summarising the thesis into the viva, and thus find anything I need in a flash. Well that's the theory anyway! Once I've finished doing that I will be tackling the big questions (like what would I do differently, what are the weaknesses, what's the most significant result, etc.) that examiners might ask.

I still don't have a date, but I'm hopeful of hearing something soon. Main thing is I'm preparing. At the moment I'm still expecting my viva to be around the end of March. I met my supervisor for an informal chat last week, which helped, and another member of academic staff is going to meet me to give me advice next week as well. So all good.

I'm not having a mock viva. It wouldn't be good for me. If you do have one I'd recommend you have it more than a day before the real thing though, so you can recover _and_ learn from it.

I know how it feels waiting for the viva date. Mine was appointed two days after my thesis was despatched to the examiners.
As for the thesis summary, actually I feel I know my thesis inside out and even the rereading I mam doing now is just to find the typos and double check the content before I answer the generic questions.

I remember a member of this fourm who had her viva and she had the attitude of I am ready to have my viva tomorrow without preparing for it. Now I feel the same I would do it but to avoid feeling guilty I am doing these preparations. No point of gambling here.

Everyone is telling me that my examiners are very nice especially the external. One of my external's current PhD student is a friend of mine and they both were talking about me. The external said to my friend before reading my thesis "I know......'s supervisor and he told me that this thesis is a good one and if he said that I am sure it is a good one". However, I still feel so nervous and all I am thinking of is the scene of me crying after the viva :( I do not know if this normal or not but it keeps going on in my mind. I do not want to rely on my external general comment about my work as it might have been a compliment to my supervisor and it was before he read the thesis.

Not knowing the unknown freaks me a lot!:-(

I wish I did know my thesis inside out, but I have significant memory problems due to brain damage, so the summarising technique should help me a lot to try to overcome those.

I do hope I hear about my viva date soon. My thesis was submitted 17 days ago, so it's been rather an age. Though my internal also changed recently, so there has been some movement.

My supervisor described one of my examiners as a combination of intimidatingly scary and nice. Which is rather worrying! But I'm confident they should be fair, which is the main thing.

Good luck guys, with your vivas.... some people really enjoy theirs, remember that- it's a unique chance to discuss your research in depth with a captive and informed audience.
Vitae has got a list of tips on preparing for the viva:
http://www.vitae.ac.uk/researchers/1241/Your-viva.html
and a 'check list'
http://www.vitae.ac.uk/researchers/1258/viva%20checklist.html

sincerely hope these are useful to you!
Tennie

Thanks Tennie: I found both lists very helpful, and will be using them in my viva preparation.

Bilbo I hope u have the date very soon
(me on page 94 out of 450) :(
I just heard from y friend that my external was surprised that I exceeded the 80,000 words limit (reaching approx 100,000 words) but he would turn a blind eye on it and will not ask me to delete anything as I've done great effort writing all of it. This gave me a bit of a relief that I will be meeting a very considerate person

Teenie
Many thanks for sharing this useful site I really like the checklist bit.

Crikey 450 pages! Mine is 250 pages long, but the last 50 are bibliography + appendix so don't really count. My core thesis is 70,000 words long, which is a little short for my discipline, but I've been reassured by lots of people that it will be ok. Hoping the examiners agree.

I'm slowly working through rereading. Now up to page 74. Spotted an "a" which should be "as" just now. Don't mind silly small errors like that. There aren't too many. More serious errors would worry me!

mine is 467 including everything (406 without bibliography and appendices)
Yes I just spotted the same error of urs and others like "ether" which should be "whether"
a difference in numbers like I say "a previous study had 18 blagh blagh" and they say "they had 28 blagh blagh" :-(
I am not being slow as much as being lazy. I only work better under time pressure

I'm dead slow ;-) I can only work for short periods due to serious illness, plus I find my concentration wanders after reading for too long. I try to complete rereading a chapter at a time. I checked chapter 3 of my thesis earlier tonight. Next night it's chapter 4, and that's the biggest of the lot, so that will be a big thing to get out of the way. But I'd rather do the checking in lots of smaller chunks, and be fresh and careful, than try to push myself more.

Of course I don't even have a viva date yet, so I reckon I have plenty of time :)

I am really so to hear about ur illiness I hope u recover soon.
I think I got plenty of time too but the thing I m pushing my self to finish this preparations thing which might mean that i may loose some information from here and there because i was rushing myself.
I hope you hear about the viva date this week ;-)

Afraid the illness is incurable and progressive, so I'm stuck with it. It's been an increasing problem throughout the PhD. But I've made it to this stage, so have nearly got there, though I've been managing on less and less hours by the end (less than 5 hours a week over the final year).

Every day I hope for an email about the viva in my inbox. Nothing yet :-s

So well done for fighting till u reached this stage

I have a hunch u will get it by the end of this week or early next week ;-)

Got my viva date just now. End of March. Eek. Wibble. At least come April the viva will be over.

Fortunately I finished rereading my thesis the other day. I just have to think about the "big" questions that might come up. Should be fine. Fingers crossed!

Excellent news, Bilbo. And remember, by Easter (first thing in April), it'll all be over! happy Easter Egg hunting(gift)