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viva date - freak out!!!
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Quote From walminskipeasucker:

Chrisrolinki, I know the hour is late, but are there any books which you think may be of help? I can get you some viva prep books and things like that.


I'd recommend Tinkler & Jackson's book, as I've said on this forum a lot before. It removed almost all the terror for me.

I didn't have a mock viva by the way. I didn't think it would help me, and I only wanted to go through the process once!

Part time student
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I was a part-time PhD student over 6 years, managing over the latter half on just 5 hours or so total a week, in 1 hour chunks in the evening spread throughout the week.

I didn't worry about progress so much until I got near the end and had an absolute university deadline for submission! Before then I just kept going, in my own way. My supervisor said I was making very good use of limited time, and doing far more than he would have expected.

I did my literature review in 3 months, so after then I started my research. I was a history student, so that involved spending time with archival material (either in archives, or dragged locally to me), transcribing and analysing it, and then writing up.

I didn't impose deadlines on myself until I started the writing up of the thesis, halfway through. Before then I just worked at my own pace. However I made sure that I kept track of my progress, using an Excel spreadsheet, and having a row for each month, noting what I'd done, what I'd written, any meetings etc. That way I got a good sense of progress.

And in my discipline it isn't normal to publish before completing a PhD. I did (2 journal papers), but that was unusual. Most people don't, and it isn't expected, or encouraged. We're told to focus on producing our theses.

How much of a problem is this?
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Oh I definitely agree with the benefits of presenting a proposed idea. But don't hold back too much. I was talking to my husband about this (post doc) and he commented that if you hold too much back on the methodology or whatever, because you're concerned it might change, you may end up getting interrogated quite hard about this gap in the talk in the after-talk questions. Better to be provide some detail, up front, to add meat to the talk, and deflect questions like that.

How much of a problem is this?
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I don't think it would be a problem to suggest a line of analysis which you might later abandon for very good reason.

I do, however, think it would be a problem if you don't have enough content in your presentation, and it is all up in the air. You need some meat, i.e. something of substance. I guess I'm siding with your supervisors here.

Final draft proof reading nightmare - help!
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Quote From mothlene:

I'm doing the proof read now and it's a graft having to go through literally every last sentence of it, but I am aiming for 'no revisions' (ambitious, I know)


I wish you luck, but different people read the same text in different ways, and you can't predict how your examiners react. They might quibble about something that you pass as fine - something low-level and syntactic - or they may have issues with a higher-level meaning issue.

I honestly think it's not a good use of energy/effort to try to do what you're doing. But maybe it will work. I do hope so.

Final draft proof reading nightmare - help!
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Quote From mothlene:

but I was pretty taken aback when she said "...highly entertaining, but lacking in academic register..."


Again that echoes almost exactly what the writing tutor said to me when she read my draft chapter. I was shocked too. My supervisors have no problems with my writing style. Neither did my examiners :)

From First Draft to Final Draft
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My supervisors referred to the full draft I sent them last summer as "full draft", not first draft. Which given how long I'd taken over preparing it (years! part-time student with writing-up nightmare!) was a more accurate reflection.

My problem was the opposite of yours Jojo, so I can't really help with hacking out words. My department expected 80-100,000 words, but no matter what I tried, short of waffling for Britain, I couldn't reach 80,000. My submitted thesis was 70,000 words long, but I passed, so it was ok.

Please recommend me a book
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Generally I'd agree with the just-dive-in advice. But I did find two books particularly useful.

Firstly "Authoring a PhD" by Dunleavy. This helped me shape the overall structure of my PhD thesis, and made writing up much more tackleable than it would have been otherwise.

And, in the very final stages, "The Doctoral Examination Process" by Tinkler & Jackson. This demystified the viva, removing the terror, and helped me prepare for it in the best possible way.

Writing more analytically
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My main tip for writing more analytically is always to think "so what". Both my supervisors hammered this in to me. It's not enough to say what something says (description), but you need to say why it's important to the reader (moving to more analytical).

viva date - freak out!!!
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Wow that is fast. Ok, start preparing tomorrow! And think positive thoughts :)

Final draft proof reading nightmare - help!
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If your supervisors aren't raising the issues that the proof reader is then I'd recommend that you ignore the proof reader. In fact I wouldn't have recommended that you hire them, but there you go. Not enough Latin words for instance?! Are you a classics scholar? If not who'd want Latin words!

I had a similar experience, but with a writing skills person at my university. She offered to read my first main chapter. Her feedback was scathing, and very demoralising, and not delivered in an encouraging way either. Really knocked me for six. Then I figured that my supervisors hadn't raised her issues, and I disagreed with most of hers (she was focusing on syntactic rather than semantic things), so I ignored her feedback, and didn't show her any more chapters.

And I sailed through my viva with incredibly minor typographical corrections. So it can be done.

Good luck!

Supervisor as author for journal they did not contribute to
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In my field (humanities) it's very normal for students to write single-author papers, in their own names, acknowledging their supervisor(s) in the acknowledgements. I did this during my PhD. What field are you in? In science there are different conventions, so that could be relevant here.

glasses?
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I have alcohol-doused tissue things, sort of like the things you get to clean your hands with in an Indian restaurant. I bought a pack of them in my local Sainsburys.

Student forever...
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Well it's almost 20 years to the month since I went to university the first time around. And I've been a student for most of those years. And next year I'm signed up for an OU course. Yes I'm a student forever :)

As for the writing up, I found it the most difficult part of my PhD, partly because I had to restart again part way through, because I was finding it so hard. My supervisor said "Don't you find it fun?" and I nearly swore at him! I found it the most painful bit by far, and was glad when it was over.

finishing MSc ... depression about PhD and the question 'what next?'
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Does your university have a careers service for students/graduates? Most do. If so maybe you should ask their advice? They often have computer assessment tools which can work out what jobs might really suit you, and should be able to advise what your qualifications could be used for.