This is a great blog - thank you! And thanks so much for the info re originality. I had a PhD (Humanities)interview recently and the first question was 'how will your proposed research make an original contribution to the field?'. Threw me completely! The source material is untouched by the academy ie it is pretty niche but beyond that, I didn't have an answer! Beginning to understand the 'originality' thing a bit more..

Many congratulations on passing and your advice is really helpful, even though I am just applying.

Lizzie

Bad day?

Thank you for sharing - I really enjoyed reading this. With my own viva coming up on Wednesday (eeeek!!) it's all good grist for the mill. I don't feel as though I've done nearly enough preparation, but at the same time I suspect I will never really feel as if I've done enough!

My supervisors both say they're pretty sure I'll pass with minor corrections, but reading this cautionary tale I'll know not to take that for granted!

Thanks. How did it go littleowl?

That's nice of you! I might have taken a bit too long to get there. I guess once you learn how to write 80k words, it's difficult to lose the habit ;)

Thanks for asking! I'm pleased to say it went like a dream, and I passed with minor corrections. It was going so well and was so relaxed that I had to keep reminding myself that yes, it really was my viva!

So am now to be Dr littleowl formally as of July :)

Congratulations, Dr littleowl! And thanks to TheGoodShip for the blog. It was very informative.

Congrats to all Dr.'s in this post, and a special thanks to the OP for creating this thread. I was afraid it was the weekly "I did so horribly what shall I do?????" post, however I was pleasantly surprised and thankful to have a fresh critical framework, with which to challenge my own research.

A+ would read again ;)

Not at all, Dr TheGoodShip! You write excellently (of course!). It was really fun reading the build up, and like Fled - I too would read it again! :-)

Dr littleowl: that's great news. Congrats.

AislingB: cheers!

Fled: thanks very much, nice of you to say!

lizziejamescaroon: thanks! :}

I'm doing my thesis corrections now. They are going OK. My externals were quite good and provided a relatively straightforward 'to do' list. It reads like 'insert critical here' and 'insert critical comment there'.

For me, corrections have been just like having another 3 months on the thesis. Funny thing is, I'm not actually sick of it. Although when I get bored, I have been procrastinating a lot!

*Plays Flappy Bird*

I just wish there was something more than online chat here... Come on people, share your "nearly failed viva" experience.

You're a difficult customer!

I've finished my thesis corrections now. I'm pretty sure that my internal examiner didn't even read them. I did improve the thesis significantly, but it will pretty much languish unread in future. I think that's the fate of many theses.

I've learnt a lot. I submitted too soon, but also the project wasn't well conceived. It wasn't critical/evaluative. That's not to say it wasn't complex, or hard, but it wasn't what is conventionally seen as doctoral research work.

Still, I like technical writing. I won't give up on it. And for the future, I've learnt a lot of lessons.

With http://ethos.bl.uk (or other national electronic repositories) and University electronic repositories, theses do get read these days. Perhaps they still don't get as much coverage as journal papers but they do get read.

My repository copy is downloaded about 7 times a month, another copy on http://www.academia.edu is downloaded 14 a month and as for Ethos, I've no idea.

The thesis became the basis for a book chapter (as well as being broken up into papers) and the analytical statistics on http://www.academia.edu suggest twice as many reads on the book chapter as the thesis itself.

Ian

Thanks Mackem_Beefy. Yes, it turns out that people do actually read the thesis. More than a year on, I have reflected a lot. I think the best way to view a viva and corrections is as part of a *learning process*.