You’ve had your viva – but your PhD isn’t finished yet*

In this post, Dr Meryl Faiers, a recently completed PGR from the Shakespeare Institute, complements Charlene Rose’s recent post on major corrections with her experiences of minor corrections and the different challenges with which these presented her.

(*unless you’re one of the lucky few to receive no corrections!)

Following the excellent advice of the Preparing for your viva workshop I gave myself a real break from my thesis after submission, helped in no small part by Christmas and the holiday season offering major distractions from research preoccupations. I barely thought about the thesis until the first week of the new year, when the viva date was confirmed, properly re-engaging with it just a couple of weeks in advance of the viva. Only at that point did I really appreciate how very close I had been to it for months (if not years – mine was a part-time PhD) when I read it through much more objectively and found typos that had previously slipped through. The relaxed 90-minute viva went as well as I had hoped: I was given minor corrections and departed in a haze of euphoria. As a result, I completely forgot to ask, ‘What happens now?’ and therefore had no idea how long it would take for the written reports to come through, nor even when the one month allowed for completion of corrections would commence.

Ten days later the unasked question was answered, when the examiners’ reports and corrections came through – and my one-month grace period began. I knew there would be typos, those I had spotted (which I had given to my examiners) and those I had still missed; and I had a fair idea about the nature of the other corrections as they had been clearly signalled at the viva. Despite this, I still struggled. My problem was that I had, emotionally, left the thesis behind after the viva. Mission accomplished, I had thought. I now needed to absorb the corrections (thinking of them as recommended improvements helped combat feelings of negativity here) and to properly re-engage with the thesis which by now felt like a rather distant piece of work. I found this re-engagement stressful as I had to refamiliarize myself not only with the words on the page but with the thought processes and arguments underlying them. As a result, I had to give myself a tighter deadline for completion in order not to endure unnecessary stress for a full month. This meant a very intensive period of revision and I know this won’t work for everyone, but I work better to deadlines that I control. So exactly two weeks after receiving the minor corrections, I re-submitted the thesis with the recommended improvements made.

What did I learn from this post-viva experience? In retrospect, I should have asked as early as the viva preparation workshop what the process afterwards was likely to be, but at that distance, the viva felt like the end point. And I would not have walked away from the thesis emotionally as soon as I did, to make the correction period less stressful. But I know this is easy to say, harder to achieve, if you’re already on to the next project or job.