That sounds dreadful - I really hope you get a favourable outcome from your re-viva and from the grievance action you are taking. Hopefully you'll be able to put it all behind you at some point and move on to something better. Good luck!

Cakeman, you didn't sound ageist at all!

Hi Armendaf,

Yep I'm ok now thanks! My methodology is a mixture of design history/material culture and sociology mostly, so uses a combination of archive/contemporary sources and qualitative interviews.

Good luck with your coding checking, it sounds a bit onerous if you don't mind me saying so. Do you have a date set for your viva, or a mock one lined up?

Yes I wonder what Lara's up to as well!

It must be so tedious preparing for vivas, but please correct me if I'm wrong!!

I didn't realise there was such a difference between disciplines with this post-doc situation. I'm glad I'm in the arts and humanities where the likely outcome post-PhD seems to be a mixture of lecturing and research, unless there's a possibility of being written into a bigger research project as a research fellow.

Cakeman, I'm shocked that you think that man at 47 is too old to become a lecturer, he's got about another 20 years of work until he officially becomes a pensioner! Maybe that's another wrong assumption on my part, I'd thought that scientists would teach as well as do research, so could always shift the balance of what they do if they want to - some people in my area move towards more research, less lecturing, others go the opposite way, but it's not really a big problem as you're likely to be doing both anyway.

I'm not in that position yet and I'm sorry you're having problems, but it's interesting to know there's yet another stage of PhD hell to go through - there are so many!

Thanks Tokyorabbit, I think you're right. I'm just focussing on finishing the thing right now, everything else can wait!

Hello,

Tokyorabbit, I wouldn't worry about packing it in earlier than others seem to on here, it's just as likely that they're having long bouts of procrastination or just not working very productively, even if they're clocking up the hours. We all work differently and I can't work late into the night without the next few days being a complete write off, I'd rather get an early night and start early the next day - I get more done that way, but that probably doesn't work for others.

I'm quite behind at the moment, I wasted so much time being ill last week and yesterday going to the opticians, all unavoidable really, so today I'll really have to get a decent draft of this methodology chapter out of the way. It's a very rough draft at the moment, so I'll try to get a better version done by this evening. I'll have to find a couple of papers that I'm supposed to be referencing in this chapter, but they are buried somewhere in these piles of folders and papers that seem to be my temporary filing system at the moment. I'm dreading starting to look for them, as the whole floor will be covered in paper. I'm starting to feel like an academic version of a bag lady, except instead of living amongst all my possessions tied up in plastic bags like the lady near college, I live amongst paper, and every bit is useful too (hehe, well probably!)

Hi Tractorgirl, nice to hear from you! Hope the job is still going well and your viva prep is coming along - do you have a date set for it, or for a mock one?
Yep, I am watching Diagnosis Murder again!!! Pamela Anderson's ex has been replaced by Jesse Travis now as the medical sidekick, so it's more watchable! It's a bit weird as Steve Sloan has got really blond hair, I was sure it was brownish in later episodes, it looks like a rather dodgy dye job I'm afraid, I think I prefer the brown look. Maybe if I keep watching I'll be able to spot the point when he morphs into a darker haired cop with bigger roles in the mysteries... yeah I know, any excuse but it is my allowable lunchbreak!

Anyway, I'd better get off this forum and do some work now. Hope you get your chapter finished today, Tokyorabbit (up)

I'm trying to remember where I was at that point, though it seems ages ago now... *sigh*... where did all the time go...? I'm part-time and have also spent a lot of time doing teaching and other non-PhD related stuff, which meant I frequently did nothing for my thesis for months on end. Am also mainly arts and humanities.

If you've done loads of reading, does that mean you've written your literature review? I think at that point I'd read the relevant literature and done bits of writing - a literature review of sorts and several short pieces about my research questions and aspects of my methodology of a few thousand words each. I had a good idea of what my overall thesis was going to cover, roughly what the focus for each chapter was going to be and what I wanted to investigate for each one. That pointed towards my methodology, the theoretical approach and what data I needed to collect, so I was starting to plod through that. When you know that, you can work out a thesis masterplan and a timetable for delivering written chapters to your supervisors for feedback. It's all likely to change anyway over the years, but in retrospect I wish I'd written more draft chapters much earlier and had more deadlines set with my supervisors for handing stuff in for regular feedback. That's because I find writing tortuously slow at times and at least when you've got stuff down on paper you can work with it and amend it, plus you have to think about it when you're writing, which helps sort it out in your mind and raises other questions or reveals gaps in what you know. It's easy to carry on reading endlessly as it's really interesting, but I think I used that sometimes to postpone actually getting down to my own writing. Sorry not to be more specific with tips or whatever.

That all sounds rather crap, especially your second supervisor's comment about not wanting to read a draft that wasn't final! There are loads of drafts between the start and the end of a PhD, so I'm not sure how you're meant to improve without feedback...? Are you still working on the report? I think if I was in your situation right now I'd concentrate on the report and the presentation, and try to worm out of anything that's not upgrade related, like that poster competition, though it sounds like that's done now? Try not to worry too much until you get feedback after the upgrade - it might be loads better than you're currently thinking and boost your confidence a bit. If it's not as good as you'd like, maybe it'll be an opportunity to sort out whatever's going on with your supervisors, before they totally undermine your confidence. Stick with it if you can for now, but good luck.

Kiwifruit, I've been wondering about similar things myself.

I've just had my examiners confirmed and mentioned that I was a bit anxious about the viva to my supervisors. I was reassured that apart from being appropriate academically for my thesis, the examiners were actually genuinely interested in my work which is apparently a bonus, as it is less likely to be a chore for them to read and examine. Plus they are all established academics rather than 'young turks' with something to prove to others present during the viva, so theoretically my lot should be fair rather than tough for the sake of proving themselves. I was also told it would be a good idea to cite their work more often throughout my thesis than I actually have done so far - not in an obviously smarmy sucking-up way, but when it's relevant to the argument. Luckily my thesis doesn't contradict them theoretically but extends their work, but I'm dreading having to re-read all their work in depth for the viva prep as they're rather prolific, so I really need to check before I submit that I haven't accidentally misquoted them.

I know one potential examiner was rejected ages ago because of her abrasive personality. There's nothing to say examiners deemed 'nice' won't turn into rottweilers during a viva, but I feel that my supervisors have done all they can to pre-empt any obvious problems up to this point in the process. I was thinking maybe it would be a good idea to get a very 'challenging' panel for my mock viva as preparation, but I'll see what they say when the time comes.

Congratulations on seeing it through to the end, I wondered how your viva went. I agree, it is very difficult at times. All the best with whatever you do next.

pupa

chaps

Extenuating circumstances can only make a certain amount of difference to an overall grade. Presumably you've got academic feedback on all your pieces of written work, on why you got those grades? You've got the MA, so unless the actual grade is going to make a huge difference to whatever you want to do next, is it really worth pursuing this any further? The whole process isn't going to be exactly stress-free.

pimp

I like the way they end up making sentences, like the wimpy pimp with the limp