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Straight after I received the examiners report and the R&R verdict I met my supervisor to discuss what needs doing. We carefully read through the requests of the examiners and there were three important points on which there was a disagreement between my supervisor and the examiners. My supervisor thinks that what the examiners ask in certain cases has no point whatsoever and that I should NOT follow their advice / request. On the contrary, when I resubmit my thesis, he says that I must write to them WHY I did not do what they asked me to do... and justify it fully...

To make a long story short, I was told by the supervisor that essentially the examiners created more problems than the thesis has...

And a word of advice before I close this post: this is what happens when one is given a famous Professor with 30 years of research as an external. Avoid them like the devil.
:p

Whatever happened happened, but now what?

It's a tricky one and I think it depends on the examiner, their personality and how you approach it but I didn't agree with all the suggested changes I was given and I did exactly what your supervisor suggested and as you've stated above. However, be very diplomatic in how you do it.

Best of luck!

First and foremost, if you carefully reflect on your viva voce examination, I suspect you should have a lot to gain from the insights of the famous Professor with 30 years research experience. Mine had been a Professor for well over 20 (not 30) years, and globally ranks top 5% in my field. Putting his name on my CV and obtaining a positive reference from him, I've realised, has been very helpful! Concerning the corrections you've been asked to make, I am sure you and your supervisor had no issues with some and apparently find others unnecessary. For those corrections you considered necessary, you'll need to tackle them as appropriate. For those you and your supervisor deemed unnecessary, your supervisor is right in asking you to explain why you have left them uncorrected. What I’ll do is to make a list of the corrections – if anything is unclear in the examiners’ report, you (or your supervisor) should be able to seek clarifications from them via emails. Using the list, I’ll sort the corrections into two sections/categories: accept and reject. For the accepted corrections, I’ll address them as appropriate. For the reject, I’ll strengthen my arguments (if applicable) using more raw and secondary data to defend my position. When submitting the corrected version, I’ll enclose a list of the corrections required and made. I’ll also list other corrections I've been asked to make but which I disagreed with, explaining why the corrections were unnecessary and indicating what I’ve done to strengthen my stance. I personally experienced this just under a year ago and my resubmission was highly commended. Good luck!

Thank you ever so much for your time. I must admit I feel very lucky to contact some people from this forum. Nice advice.

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