Hi Blackbyrd - I'm so happy for you :-) Congrats
on the pass - that's brilliant news, I was wondering how it had gone!  I was
talking to a friend this morning who passed last week with minor corrections and
she is exactly the same - like she's been hit by a bus basically. I'm preparing
myself for much the same next week when its my turn. I was only saying to my sup
yesterday that I can't get enthusiastic about it - knowing that I can't just
'pass' (unheard of in my field pretty much) and that no matter what happens I'll
have to get writing again makes it feel anti-climactic before you even get
there! Its like, why bother with the drama act - just send me a list of what
you're gonna insist I have to do anyway and be done with it ;-)Still, the
important thing is that you've passed and that is just so fantastic
xxx

Hi everyone

My viva is next Wednesday and I'm finding that the fear is beginning to really bite. I had to run out of the supermarket today as I had a wave of nausea and dizzyness - I know its stress related. I've begun prepping for the viva - reading through and its all utter rubbish - I found a typo on pg 1 for heaven's sake! It doesn't seem to flow, it doesn't say anything - it all seemed ok when I wrote it - I can't work out what's happened - I even went and checked the word files for fear that I've printed off an earlier version rather than the completed thesis.

I've been in tears most of the afternoon - I don't know if this is normal, or if I'm going nuts or what - all I know is that right now I would do ANYTHING to get out of attending that viva with a thesis as poor as mine appears to be. I just don't understand why it looks so naff now - I worked so hard :-(

I know a lot of you are at the same stage as me, and even more who've I've watched come through this and out the other side - how did you cope/are you coping? It is normal for the work to suddenly appear fit to grace the pages of a nursery school book rather than a PhD thesis? Why is the fear so extreme when I still have another week to go? I worry that I'll be in the local secure establishment by this time next week!

Help!!!

Excellent news :-) it feels like a massive weight is lifted as you walk away having handed it over - puuussshhhhh for these last few hours :-)

Keep going! Not long now and it'll be in and you'll be done :-) *cheers on from the other side*8-) You really need to get here, its lovely and so worth pushing through those last few hours. Its weird really, I'm only 4 days post submission now, but it feels like it never happened. I've been doing very little other than cleaning, scrubbing, planning stuff, and sitting in the garden with a glass of wine each evening lol. I know what that last minute slump feels like and I hope you're over it now, its just a case of gritting your teeth, putting your head down and kicking for the end, then you can join me here in 'sit with feet up' land (or take down and wash curtains if you're like me!) I still can't actually sit and do nothing much, I'm having to stay busy but its so nice doing something different. Just don't forget to factor in printing and binding time - my printing took over a day!

Yay, I've finally submitted - early! I wasn't due to submit until Friday, but things came together over the weekend, I got through the printing, a friend comb-bound it for me yesterday morning and I just figured that I might as well go and submit it rather than bringing it home and living with it for the rest of the week :-)
Today I have been mainly doing housework, catching up on years of mess and having no time to do it all - the house stinks of bleach lmao! It feels good though. I think it still hasn't sunk in yet that its done and in and I don't have to work on it again for a while. We're hoping for an end of Sept viva, so no doubt I will start freaking out again very shortly :-)

I may be wrong but the message sent to you below looks like spam!

This is a tricky one as every dept and every scholarship is different so you must check exactly what the situation is with your dept and also with your supervisor. I had a uni scholarship and was restricted to 10 hrs work per week under the terms of the scholarship (better than the 6 that AHRC allow), but my supervisor didn't even like that! Even now, in completion (and so no longer funded) my dept insists that a registered PhD student can't work for more than 18 hours per week averaged over the year, so even without funding their are caps in place.

I really wouldn't advise keeping quiet though - if you don't tell and somehow they find out you could be in big trouble (again - depending on your uni). A guy I knew a couple of years back ended up having to explain himself to the Dean and having the rest of his scholarship slashed to next to nothing.

In short - find out what the regs are where you will be studying, and stick to them.

Massive congratulations Dr Heidi :-) So very pleased for you and delighted to read this!! xxx

What a dull and horrible day it is today - still, they are promising a heatwave next week which is spurring me on to sort out the remaining bits, get it printed (no mean feat in itself) and try and submit prior to the 27th so that I can enjoy the first week of the summer holidays with the kids, and go out into the daylight and get some Vit D (I'm sure I'm deficient :-))

So.... today I am completing my acknowledgements, proof reading and correcting the final two chapters and hopefully driving to campus to collect the laser printer my friend (who submitted last month) has so very kindly offered to lend to me to save me from my very slow, very unreliable, and very expensive to 'feed' inkjet - I am, of course, indebted to her for life now :-) It occured to me last night that, providing my sup doesn't find anything catastrophic that has evaded us so far in my finalised chapters, this will be the last weekend that I work on this (don't mention corrections - that doesn't count :p) I have no idea what I'm going to do with myself!

So far today I've been through and checked all my figures and tables and made sure that the numbering and referencing within the text is correct. I did a lot of cutting and rewriting and moving entire sections in the final write up after I got my full draft back, and became aware that some of the numbering had gone haywire. I thought that Word dealt with that - but obviously not... Now off to reorder the list of tables and figures

Can anybody put me straight on order of the thesis - I keep reading conflicting things - obviously its title page first, but then I have abstract, acknowledgements and contents page and I'm not sure on the order. I'm presuming contents first, but then do you put the abstract, or the acknowledgements?

I love that quote - it pretty much sums up my life right now! I too am so fed up with cutting, pasting, shifting, putting it back, taking it out, putting it back in, shifting pp xx-xx to the end of the chapter then moving it to the middle. Arggghhhhhh My sup has asked to see the whole lot again for a last minute wizz through it - he is brilliant like that, I just can't wait now to do the final formatting and submit the darned thing. A friend who graduated a couple of years back advised against over polishing - as she said, after the examiners have torn it apart and moved pp xx-xx back to the back AGAIN it all needs going over and doing yet again - can't help myself though!
I've nearly finished my acknowledgements now, my toner has arrived for the printer I'm borrowing from a friend, its all slowly coming together but STILL seems so far off. 9 days max now....(sprout)

I'm about to submit (10 days!) and my literature review has shrunk drastically in the last few months - but only because, as the thesis developed, it made more sense to put a mini lit review in each of the chapters dealing with that particular theme. My thesis definitely wouldn't work with Dunleavy's approach - I actually found it to be counter-productive in my case. I have 7 chapters with word counts (rounded to the nearestk k) 10k, 12k, 15k, 12k, 13k, 19k, 3k. The 19k should, ideally, be 2 chapters, but that wouldn't work, we tried it and it wasn't right. The first two are intro/lit review and sources and methods - they were originally one massive chapter and I was advised to split it. The next 4 are thematic and the last baby one is the conclusion.

By all means use him as a guide, but don't get too bogged down with it - do what works for you and the chapters will naturally fall to the correct length for your thesis.

I'd have thought that it would be nigh on impossible - if only because so many people seem to confuse 'top university' with 'top supervisor' at this level (as you yourself are doing :-)) At PhD level the university does not matter - the only way in which it would is that it is unlikely that the ideal supervisor would be working in the very lowest achieving institutions. I think others would agree with me when I say that FIRST you need to decide exactly what you want to do, THEN you find the perfect supervisor for your work. It doesn't matter if they are at Oxbridge or Exeter or UEA or anywhere else - it is the quality of the supervision and the expertise of the supervisory team that will be noted. You want, if possible, the guy (or girl of course) who wrote the book to supervise you - that means far far more than the location of the post grad office. You want somebody who is going to give you time, who will support you, and who is known to be a world leader. Go for that - not for Oxbridge (unless they are there of course).

I so glad to see this clarified - I've asked everyone over the years what the different dashes were for and how to sort them and nobody knew! The only time it was mentioned in my work was when one dash was short, and another long, and I was told to try and make sure that they were the same so it looked right ;-) I've only JUST worked out how to get the dash to go long when I want it to - you really do learn something new every day :-)

As has been said, its likely that you could get accepted to do the PhD, but very unlikely that you would be able to get any funding. In our faculty every single applicant shortlisted for funding had a first class BA and a distinction at MA and only one was offered the funding. Its been the same in humanities for a while - when I started I missed out on AHRC funding to another girl with a similar first and distinction. I was fortunate enough to get a uni scholarship and dept bursary - both dependent also upon academic ability. You may be lucky, but I think you need to consider whether you can afford to self fund - many do, but its tough.

I would say that at the moment mine is, yes. But then I have been very very fortunate in securing an RA position during my PhD, plus a lot of teaching and further dept work, which has now led on to a senior RO position with a few days left until I submit. Like anything in academia these days its on a fixed term contract, but I'm hoping that it will lead on to more work - but for salary (I'm on an hourly rate) its what I would hope for at this stage :-)