Hi all,

I've posted here before about an awful situation. I got a pass with minor corrections in January 2015, submitted them, only to be told in September I had to do major corrections.

Before anyone says "that can't happen, you need to do xyz" I have literally exhausted every single option and have sought legal help. I've no choice. It's either do it, or don't get the PhD, so I'm not looking for any advice concern this.

What I am wondering about however is this. I'm due to start a full time job this week. How feasible is for me to do major corrections while working full-time?

Also...I kinda know the answer to this, but has anyone ever heard of anyone getting a viva result they weren't happy about and bringing the research to another university to be viva'd?

Thanks in advance for replies x

Hi,

Sorry to hear about your situation. You will be able to do your revisions whilst working fulltime, it just takes a lot of sacrifice and discipline. You have to find out what works for you. For me, I find it easier to finish work between 5-6pm, have dinner that I prepared previously, and then stay working until 9 or 10pm. I find if I go home I won't do any work.

I don't think you will be able to transfer your work to another university.

Hi, I wouldn't take it to another university. Make the changes (yes they are major but working on it once a week should be sufficient?). You don't want to go through the whole process and transferring.

Have you broken down into very small chunks all the changes that need doing?

Place them on an Excel sheet and tick off as you go along. Will make it much more manageable and less daunting.

It's not fun but it's doable. I wrote the last 30K words of my thesis while working full time in a non uni job (i.e. just weekends and evenings to work on it). It was not at all enjoyable but I got it done. Just pre-warn friends/family that you will be basically be unavailable for most things during that period. And do make sure you factor in enough time/energy for self-care so you don't end up irretrievably frazzled.

Good luck.

Hi, I've been in a similar situation to yours. I was given a major correction result from my viva back in Jan and was given 9 months period to complete it. I was busy with sorting things around my personal life and generally exhausted from all these years of phd research, so I had to keep my thesis aside for 3 months, and then I got a full-time job in April, and time flies, now I'm left with only 2 weeks before the deadline!

It has been really difficult for me to do the major correction (in my case amending here and there and adding much literature and new sections so rewriting like 10k words) while doing my full-time job. For the lat 2-3 months I have not met anyone apart from my office colleagues and my house is a mess.. I must say the quality of the correction is not perfect but meeting the standard (well, hopefully!). I'm fine with it as my career won't really be in academia.

I also made a table of correction so that I can really ONLY focus on what I need to correct and also so I can convince the examiners that I have addressed their concerns.

My advice is to really specifically focus on your examiners' comments, get done with it and move on! I hope it helps and wish you best of luck!

Thanks to everyone who has responded so far, I really appreciate it. Its been an awful situation. It looks like I'm going to have to rewrite my entire thesis just to make the internal happy. So much for minor corrections!