Yeeaaa! I passed! so I thought I would put a post describing how it went.

So in my last post I was pondering as to whether to study or not the night before. In the end I read my thesis till about 9pm, had a Pizza had a couple of beers and watch Britiains got talent ;-) and went to bed about 11pm.

I slept fairly sound until about 5am, where I naturally woke up and thought, what the hell, last day of this may as well get up and get going. So I read some journals etc. which for me was probably more about distracting myself than really reading them, but it seemed to help.

Before I knew it I was on a train in to work, then in the Lab talking to folk, then drying the sweat of my shirt on the toilet hand dryers then next thing I knew I was sat at a table infront of 2 examiners and the Chair of the meeting.

They had it set out in a good way, lets say a roughly square table with each of us at an end, so it wasn't like 3 of them staring directly into my face, much less intimidating!

I knew all of the examiners and chair so the tone was slightly less formal I suppose I thought it would be. Its always different when you know the people. They told me that the external was going to direct the questioning and the internal would chip in when he had more thoughts - this I think is reasonably common to have one of them doing the main questioning, instead of fighting over priority etc

So, the dreaded first question!:
"Okay S, you go to a party and you walk up to your mate and he asks what you have done and why - how would you explain it to him?"
This really threw me and I pondered whether to truly answer it like you would to your mates - in the end I decided going for purely scientific was best - only to be stopped 2 minutes in and told, "do you think anyone would understnad that, try again" (in a friendly way). So I did!


I have to say I think this was a great ice-breaker question, it really set the tone for the whole thing.

The next thing the external said was, "okay I have to get this off my chest, the scientific content of your thesis was excellent (at which point I was like SCORE!), but your grammar was not at the same standard!" his main gripe was that I had used a lot of capital letters improperly drug names etc so we covered all of those. I just sat like the dog of the churchhill advert smiling and nodding (why interrupt when they are on a role)


My Viva mainly focused on my intro (about 1.5 hours of it), it was quite long 100 pages or so and I kind of knew the history would interst the examiner etc. The main way they asked questions was e.g. "on page 55 you said this happens, would you like to expand on that"

After that it went really quickly, they skipped the methods and said it was very succinct. couple of questions on each results chapters which they really like the science - bish bosh bash and I was done - cue hand shaking and smiling all round all round.

In total I was in for about 2.5 hours, have some minor corrections which will take a day at the most and thats it. all those years, all the heartache and dispair and low points and months of writing, ignoring friends putting on weight etc etc but all of a sudden its over, I'm now Dr S and my Job inthe states starts a week on Monday Yeeeaaaa!

So way to go me, and good luck to the rest of you, especially those writing up at the moment or waiting for your vivas - before you know it you'll be sat here posting hte weird questions you were asked on your Vivas

Hope this was helpful to some of you

Good Luck

Dr S.

Hey! Well done Sjo4! You must feel so much relief.

You're the second person (the other being Matt) in as many days to pass their PhD on the forum! It's so encouraging!

That's a really strange first question that you got asked - but one I was asked in a viva preparation course, and I thought to myself, there is no way an examiner would ask that (but obviously they do!).

Good luck with your new job.

well done S! so proud of you.

Well done!!!!!
I really hope I will be in your position in.....many years as I am starting now!
Well done again and all the best!

Congratulations!

Congratulations! And thanks for the viva info - it's always nice to hear what goes on in there from someone who's been there before! All the best in the new job.

super-mega-huge congratulations!!!!


now get packing!

thanks for the report. i wish you a great start into your new life!
if you feel like it, it would be good of you to pop in here occasionally to let us know how it's all going

WOWWWEEE! yayaya well done! Good luck in all you do next!

Congratulations!!!!!