How did you feel when you submitted your PhD thesis? Were you correct about your predicted outcome?

N

Hi all,

I'm in the final few months of write-up and I don't personally know many other PhD students (humanities hermit).

I'm curious to know how forumites felt when they finally submitted, and whether what they felt about their work ended up being accurate? I.e. if you felt bad, did you end up doing major corrections, or if you felt good, was it minor corrections? Or, does everyone just *hate* their work by the end, regardless of quality? :)

Interested to hear your stories!

M

By the emd of my thesis, I was a bit fed up with it. It took a year or so for the research bug to come back. Its not that I hated the PhD, its just that I poured so much into it that it was difficult to think of something new after that. I had to wait a little for new motivation and ideas to come back. I guess when I was doing it , I felt like I had done a comprehensive job, but now looking back I can see what remains to be done.

N

Thanks for this :)

If you don't mind me asking, what did you do in that year away from research?

M

I was looking for postdoc and lecturing work. This means that I still had to come up with some kind of research idea, but It felt like a struggle. All I could think was the stuff I had just done! I kept going to conferences and writing papers. I also started working on a academic journal with some friends and doing guest lectures. Slowly, by talking to people and reading around, I began looking at issues from a different angle. I think I can still use some of the data I collected for my PhD for future research.

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