Your supervisors recommend someone and the recommendation is usually accepted by the department. I actually suggested my external - her work is the closest parallel to mine in the UK.

Kicking myself now, obviously. Wish I had taken notice of something she did the 1 time I had met her previously - she told myself and another academic what she thought was wrong with the work of one of her PhD students at Manchester - that is very unprofessional and I had totally forgotten about that. My advice is to find the phd students working with a potential external examiner and check the external's maniac rating with them.

In between the f-t and p-t job I hardly get any time on the phd. I think the fact that I enjoy my job and have a supportive family have made this bearable. If I were an overseas student, paying huge fees and away from my family I would have given up. I've booked a week off work in December for pure thesis work, starting the week with a study advice appointment. At the end of that week I'll be able to see how much is left to do. My current workflow has me submitting some time in the autumn next year. On the advice of the University PG expert, I had a brainstorming session with both supervisors and sent a plan to the examiners saying how I planned to address their concerns to check that that is what they intended by what they wrote, but the external replied and said that it was not her place to provide any more detail on what was required and I should just ask my supervisor instead. So I work in the dark (figuratively speaking).

Good luck with the viva. Rowena Murray's book 'How to survive your viva' (or something like that) is very good. It didn't do me much good as my external had already reached conclusions and upset me so much I lost all my eloquence (by saying that 4 years was the minimum and by attacking my supervisors and my institution, and butting in and answering the internal examiner's questions before she had even finished asking me) . However, everyone else I know who used it has fared very well. Summarising your hypothesis and your contribution to knowledge is important.

Several of my friends have gone into their vivas and been told 'congratulations on a successful thesis' right at the start and then the viva has been about challenging the arguments so that they are clearer about how to strengthen them for publication. I hope this will be your situation - I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Yeah. I'll pass eventually, I just find myself getting to the end of my working day and then thinking, now I've got to go home and work some more. I was ok with doing that when I was working on the project before, but now I keep thinking, I shouldn't have to be doing this. Anyway, onwards and upwards - I sent my revised thesis plan to my examiners yesterday and I have found a supplementary supervisor in the department who has just emailed me with some suggestions. I have also noticed that there is no book out there on doing major corrections - and I'm going to see that as an opportunity...

Thanks for the replies everybody . I've done some positive things already like setting up a wiki for my corrections so that my supervisors can drop in comments when they are abroad (I've called it 'thesis reborn' in line with positive thinking). I just needed to have a good grumble. The bad result was down to the examiner but the fact that there were weaknesses in my thesis that she could point to is down to me, which is harder to deal with (I think my tip is to think about the marking criteria at every point of write-up).

I'm not sure whether the external got major corrections herself , but she did her PhD in the US so it will have been a longer process. Funnily enough though, I read a review of her monograph based on her phd and the reviewer criticised her for all the same things she criticised me for - the difference being she got through viva and publisher with these 'defects' and that the reviewer thought it was good despite these concerns.

The external wanted me to take one chapter and re-research the whole thesis based on that chapter but wider evidence. Thankfully the internal battered her down to a compromise of 'paring down my evidence'significantly. Basically I take 25% of my evidence and rewrite the thesis based only on that. I know no-one's thesis makes sense to anyone else but it was on the common trends found in writing in a certain period - i.e. I can't do comparisons anymore if I'm down to 1 author so there will be radical changes. But as that's not what the external originally wanted, just what she was forced to compromise to, I wonder whether she will be happy with version 2...
BTW My viva result is very rare, most externals don't have personality defects so you will all be fine - I need to say that so that I don't cause panic.

Unfortunately the internal examiner has signed the joint report on their recommendation. She wanted it to be a pass with minor corrections, the external seems to have wanted to offer me a masters with the option of resubmitting a radically different thesis, so they argued for an hour and compromised on major corrections. The internal put up a big fight but actually she would have been better off saying, we don't agree let's get a 3rd opinion. That means all the paperwork says that they agree on major corrections. My supervisors called everybody in the university but there is now no way to appeal. Unfortunately major corrections is not quite a pass
, it is a deferred result. Thankfully it is not a fail, which it almost could have been. Choose examiners carefully.

I'm doing a Humanities PhD and submitted after 3 years fulltime, plus 6 months p-t work whilst working. My 2 (very experienced) supervisors both said yes it is good, it will pass. Then my result was major corrections. The internal examiner virtually agreed with my supervisors but the external didn't like the thesis. She told the internal examiner she was never going to be favourable to that genre of work.
I knew I wasn't passing at the start of the viva when she said that a PhD should take not a minute less than 4 years fulltime otherwise it could not reach the required standard. Her comments suggest expectations beyond my institution's criteria, but they are all academic judgements, and I've checked with my institution and the QAA and you can't appeal a PhD result on the grounds of academic judgement. I just can't believe that my choice of examiner has meant that I am now seriously rewriting the thesis whilst working fulltime and teaching part-time (my department were so confident that I was going to pass that they have commissioned a module from me).
Sorry for the long whine but a phd is 3-4 years right?