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Viva

S

I just sat my viva for three hours and was told I didn’t talk enough about my lit review amongst other stuff. I am dyslexic and have mental health issues. I feel this outcome is unfair as if they had asked me to talk about my lit review I would have done. And they didn’t take into consideration my process memory issues. What
Can I do? Got corrections to submit up to 1 year.

A

This feels like a simple question - do the corrections, and submit within a year. Significantly within a year, if you feel you can address them fully within the time.

You mention dyslexia and mental health issues, but whilst a viva should - and should have - sought to make reasonable adjustments, it is ultimately based on the science - you should be incredibly proud that overcoming dyslexia and mental health issues, you passed with corrections based on the objectively-examined quality of the science.

It's an impossible space, otherwise, to ask examiners to routinely judge how much x condition should allow a PhD to be defended or written. I'd think you're possibly interpreting the corrections/feedback from the wrong standpoint, in that you're jumping to conclusions on how unfair they are (which is the gut response to criticism!), rather than considering what might be being said between the lines is that the literature review wasn't well-defended and/or weak on the page, rather than that you didn't 'talk enough about it'. If the examiners really wanted to be unfair, you'd have walked out with an MPhil or fail.

It would feel, with a positive outcome, that it would be an exercise in foot-shooting to insist on another viva, which could only realistically have a worse outcome, unless the PhD is a flawless straight pass (and very, very few are).

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