Different universities have slightly different rules, but the basic difference is that "pass with major corrections" means the examiners don't re-examine the thesis as a whole after resubmission -- they are only supposed to assess whether the corrections have been satisfactorily made. They're not supposed to come up with completely new corrections that they want. R&R, on the other hand, puts you through the viva process again; they re-examine the thesis from scratch and can ask for further corrections / fail the thesis on some other grounds. In terms of outcomes, it really depends on the university. At mine, the only possible outcomes after major corrections were pass / pass with minor corrections / pass with more major corrections / R&R - they couldn't fail me at that stage, until I'd had a chance at R&R over the longer timescale. If it had been R&R, the outcomes would have included MPhil only or a fail. But this really varies from institution to institution and you should check the regulations at your uni to see what the possible outcomes are.

1. Congratulations! That is great news, and you deserve a medal for going through all this and coming through as a functional person with a good thesis. That official letter - "has met the standards for the award of the PhD" - is the notification that you've PASSED and it's only a matter of time now.

2. Your university admin sounds TERRIBLE. First they lost your viva report. Then they gave you your actual result and told you it was wrong. Then they gave you the wrong report. Then they made you wait two weeks. Then they finally gave you your actual result. What on earth is happening there? If I were in your shoes, I would go see the dean or the head of the grad school and point out 1) that the process to date has been deeply unsatisfactory, and the support you have received has not been up to standard and 2) given that, it is really important for you to be adequately supported in this final stage, so that the disadvantages caused by these institutional failures don't prevent you from taking the degree. Given these circumstances, I think you should officially tell the university that you need your supervisors to stay closely involved at this stage. This conversation will implicitly flag to the school that you WILL be appealing if you don't get the degree after all this and it is their job to prevent that.

3) have you spoken to your supervisors about the revisions? It may be worth giving your supervisors a list of concrete questions - in the form, "I think when the examiner says x, they mean z and I can respond by making these 3 changes - do you agree?" Where a comment is incomprehensible, say so and ask your supervisor to tell you - via email - how to interpret it. You want a paper trail of every step you take in understanding the report at this point, I think, because your institution has proved itself pretty untrustworthy.

CONGRATULATIONS! I'm so happy for you.

It varies a lot, depending on the examiners and the particular university procedures. I heard after 2 months, via a note from my supervisor saying that the examiners had decided to pass me without any further corrections. The formal confirmation and report took another couple of weeks to arrive.

My first year or so of teaching was also rough, but it got better. It's definitely worth looking at your non-academic options, but it's also worth considering whether you will always hate teaching or anything might make a difference. I'm aware of many academics who are decent enough teachers but whose passion is all for research and they seem very happy in their jobs. I think being a good lecturer/academic involves being competent at teaching, and not finding it hugely stressful, but it doesn't require you to adore teaching.

Possible options depend on where you feel the problem lies. If you feel like the problem is your own competence in teaching, have you had any training? Will your university pay for you to do the PGCAPHE somewhere (assuming there is no in-house provision)? Perhaps you might want to do a public speaking course? It really doesn't matter if you personally are socially awkward or introvert, it's mainly about building a persona for use during teaching. Plenty of very socially awkward people are great lecturers, because they build up a persona that allows them to communicate energetically in the classroom in a way that they never would in real life. If you feel like the problem is the kind of teaching you are doing, can you switch to something else? Are you obliged to take the Masters students who don't speak English, for example, or can you negotiate making up your hours with more UG teaching? It may even be worth applying for jobs at different universities, where you may have more engaged students and less to do by way of 'disciplining' them. I just think 1.5 years is too short a time to be 100% sure that you will never enjoy teaching and that you hate teaching so much that it outweighs the pleasures of research and flexible working time and everything else that comes with a lectureship.

Most university regulations don't allow students to appeal exam results - including PhD results - on the grounds that academic judgments are mistaken. (For example, UCL's guidebook says "There is no right of appeal against an academic decision" and directs students with complaints to the student complaints procedure, which is completely focused on procedural mistakes made in conducting the exams. You can find similar wording in handbooks at SOAS, and Birkbeck, and KCL and Manchester, to pick a few other universities at random). If you exhaust university appeals and want to go to adjudication or to the courts, at least in England and Wales, the same applies. The U.K. courts don't think that they have the expertise to evaluate the substantive merits of an academic judgment, and will refuse to do so; they can and do evaluate whether a person was treated unfairly in the process of making and communicating academic judgments.

That's why everyone is advising a focus on the process of the viva, identifying occasions when the university or university personnel behaved unfairly (eg in this case, failing to allow the student access to the first viva report for months). It's not to be mean, it's because that's the kind of appeal that has a chance of success. On the other hand, appeals on the basis that the examiners were wrong about the merits of the thesis are very unlikely to succeed in this country.

I scrambled through my PhD without being systematic about this but I absolutely wish I had given it more thought - the whole process would have been less messy and stressful, I think, if I had processed my thoughts as I went along in some form other than "text of the actual thesis".

What I wish I had done was use a kind of iterative process: reading sources, making notes from them, writing down my preliminary synthesising ideas about those sources (relevance to project, half-baked ideas springboarding from them), reading more sources, making more notes, revisiting and revising previous synthesis to integrate new material and so on. Outputs for supervisor / anyone else do normally take the form of thesis chapters but I think a process like this would have helped me write better thesis chapters more smoothly -- I don't recommend my strategy of taking the whole unwieldy and neverending mass of sources and trying to synthesise it only when you are writing a thesis chapter.

Do you have professional training in therapy/counselling? I know there are a number of such services available online, but they tend to be delivered by people who have a primary qualification in counselling and perhaps personal experience of the PhD as an extra.

It is very very unlikely that you can switch universities just before submission in this way -- you can sometimes take your PhD project, in its very early stages, from one university to another (even this is rare) but you can't make a last minute switch like that at any place I'm aware of. The only option is to drop out and start again, applying for separate funding and for a whole new project, but I'm sure you can see how self-defeating that would be. Even proposing this idea to anyone in authority at your university is a terrible idea, which has the potential to wreck your relationship with your supervisor, your reputation in your field and your references for future jobs. Just finish and shake the dust of the place off your feet.

Have you read Getting a PhD in Law by Morris and Murphy? That has a chapter on the viva, I believe, and can also help you to ask some examiner-style abstract questions about your PhD (about methodology, especially, which is tricky with law). Otherwise the usual viva questions apply: what does your argument add to what's out there already in your field? What's the practical impact, if any, of your argument? Can you make a list of likely counter-arguments to your thesis and come up with how you would refute them? If you have a time, it might be worth skimming some recent work by your examiners. That will usually give you some insight into their methodological angle and allow you to predict the kind of thing they might ask. Good luck!

Have you tried counselling or therapy to manage these overwhelming feelings? You should have free or low-cost counselling available to you as a student; I would take advantage of this and see a counsellor for a few weeks or a month to see if it helps. "Just suck it up and do it" is a really, really hard thing to do and I don't know many people who have done it with this kind of awful stress and sadness looming over them. It's better to deal with your corrections and your feelings at the same time, with the professional help of a counsellor. I know it can feel like a waste of time to focus on your mental health with a PhD deadline looming but this is a false saving of time - you will probably get through it quicker, and better, if you aren't in complete emotional crisis during the process. If counselling doesn't help, and you are still tearful every day, I think it may be necessary to speak to a GP and perhaps consider anti-depressants..

I'm so sorry to hear about this. Did your internal examiner confirm that this was the outcome she and the external had agreed? Did she give you any explanation when you spoke to her?

For the moment, I would take some time away from all this if you can. Now that you have emailed your supervisors and examiners, you've done what you can for the moment. Is there a friend or someone who can come around and take you out for a drink / a movie / a walk? I think you need some distraction just now and some human company.

Once you've heard back from your supervisor - if they confirm this is the outcome and the office haven't made a mistake - I would consider your options for an appeal. You normally can't appeal on the basis of the academic decision being wrong, but it's worth checking if there were any procedural problems - any failures to comply with regulations - and speaking to a student union rep or someone like that about your options. But for now I would definitely get away from the house and the computer and distract yourself as much as possible.

I also wanted to add that going to an external body is probably something you can only do once you have exhausted the university's internal dispute-resolution process (complaints etc).

From the point of view of your future career as an academic in the UK, if that's what you want, I would also caution against external involvement (including legal advice) until you are sure you have no other option. That might mean going through every channel the university makes available - in order of escalation, meeting the head of the graduate programme, the head of department, making a formal complaint and waiting for the outcome of that - before bringing any external body in. Definitely keep excellent paper records of every meeting and comment, in case you do need to escalate to a formal process and maybe even legal action, but I advise against actually beginning any such process until you have to. I appreciate how awful it feels to wait and wait and wait, but unfortunately I feel that patience will probably serve you best in the long run.

Hi Nick,
Just to check, have you made an in-person appointment to speak to the head of the graduate school or whoever is responsible for the PhD programme at your university? I understand that you sent emails, and they just sent you complaint forms, which is frustrating and inappropriate. But it's possible they may not have fully understood how crazy the situation is and making an appointment to speak to them, face to face, may help.

One odd question: "
I could successfully tell the difference between legitimate and non-legitimate money laundering emails *" Surely legitimate money-laundering does not exist, since money laundering is wrongful by definition. I assume the sentence means I could tell the difference between legitimate emails and money-laundering emails, but it's not completely clear.

I felt exactly the same when I was waiting for the outcome of my major corrections - the journey had been so bumpy and crazy (six years!) that I was sure it couldn't possibly end well. I was 100% sure that there would be no congratulations email, that just wasn't my story. So I completely sympathise and agree that it's horrendous that they are taking so long to get back to you. That said, I DID get my congratulations email in the end and I believe the huge majority of people who actually resubmit after an R&R get their PhD; failure is far more likely where students give up after R&R and don't resubmit. So hang in there. It is much much more likely than not to be good news (at worst a few additional minor corrections) and the universe owes you that "congratulations, Dr" email. It will come.