======= Date Modified 30 Dec 2009 00:24:18 =======
Hello everyone,
I just want to say how grateful I am for your support which means the world to me. I am battling against feelings of being inadequate and completely stupid. I am writing the appeal but feel so numb I don't know where to start (not helped by the super not allowed to communicate with me). Part of me just wants to give up and look for another PhD, but this thesis has taken up so much time and so many sacrifices. The uni has a very short time span in which to submit an appeal and because the clock started ticking just before the Christmas holidays, time is short. I can believe that they did it on purpose! I agree that the Viva and academic assessment process needs to be more transparent and examiners need to be accountable. This is people's lives they are playing with so they shouldn't be allowed just to get away with this.

Hi Paige,
Gosh, I really sympathise with you. I also had completely unsupportive families (my own as well as the in-laws). Most of them were dying for me to fall flat on my face which if you read my other recent post on this site - I did.
My advice is that this is too important for you to sacrifice to fulfill your family's and friends whims. They don't understand that this isn't just a course you're doing but a full time job. Explain that this is very important and that your future may well depend on it - if that doesn't work, just distance yourself or get someone to mediate between you. They may well come round. Good luck

Thanks so much for getting back to me.  I had my viva and my thesis was deferred by a year while I attended to the examiner' s issues. Many of the changes that they asked for were completely unrelated to the thesis, but I still agreed to do them.  After the viva, the super even said the external seemed to be confused as to what the thesis was actually about!

It seems to me that I'm being abandoned by friends and colleagues as no-one wants to associate with a failed phd. I haven't had any support from the institution and now the 'supervisor' has told me he's not allowed to talk to me! 
I've also been told that my chances for appeal are very slim as the only solid grounds I had was the academic judgment of the external who was not even in my field (I wasn't allowed a choice). One thing I would like to know is who owns this thesis?  Can I take it to another institution, re-work it and submit it again?

Hi,
I've just been told I've failed and am absolutely devastated, especially since I did everything both the external and internal examiners requested (I got someone to read the thesis to ensure I had ticked all the boxes). I'm starting the appeal process but know that most appeals don't get through. My dreams of academia are over because it's highly unlikely my current employers (a university) will want to keep on a failure. It's a battle to just keep going. Are there any students out there who have successfully appealed against failure?