Thanks. I don't think the upgrade viva itself will be a problem, but I intend to use it as practice for the real thing and so am expecting the worst!

The main issue I'm having is that I'm so utterly unconvinced that my work so far, and the results I've achieved, are of the right standard to get a PhD. This train of thought has come after 22 months of faltering progress and not having a clear vision of what's required between now and final submission in 12-18 months.

I can understand that I'm not expected to be PhD quite yet (otherwise I could submit my thesis straight away!), but look at my work and results and am not convinced I can get to the place I need to be in time for the end of the PhD.

How were other people's experiences of the transfer/upgrade?

Did anyone else feel disappointed at the point transfer/upgrade but get through the PhD okay?

I'm currently 21 months into my PhD and in the process of writing up my transfer thesis to switch from the MPhil programme to PhD. I'm funded by research council and university, and have received good support from both supervisors who say that I'm currently doing fine, and that the work I've done and my writing to date (after 1st year dissertation) is also fine.

The problem is though, that I find it so hard to believe them.

My PhD was very slow to get going (significant work on simulation and results took a year to start up, but that was a year spent deep in the literature and approaching the problem) and so a lot of my thesis/argument is looking qualitative rather than quantitative at this stage. I'm writing up my transfer thesis, and I can't help but panic and stress when I start to think about my results, as all I can do is pick holes in them, realise things I did wrong or haven't done yet, and I have a massive mental block on what the results mean.

In terms of quantity, my thesis is over half-written as the introductions, literature survey and methodology are all written up okay, but I can't seem to write anything good about results.

Presenting the results is hard enough as I worry that the results I'm publishing are not not good enough and will be picked apart by an examiner, but I also have a massive mental block on the analysis and discussing what the results _mean_ - The main problem being, I don't know what they mean.

So I can't write analysis or conclusion because I'm not sure what my results are indicating, and what conclusions can be drawn from them. It's pretty much the first time I've written up my results, and the fear/worry that they're rubbish/wrong/not good enough is making me panic attack at work and uber-stress the rest of the time.

How much of an argument do I need to present for the transfer thesis? Does it matter if the results I have so far aren't great? Will I still meet the criteria?

Thanks,

Simon