Postscript
What message would you add to the end of your thesis? You don’t have time to do every follow-up, or advance every idea. Perhaps you can leave that to someone else. Perhaps there is a new perspective that you have...
Daily viva help for PhDs
What message would you add to the end of your thesis? You don’t have time to do every follow-up, or advance every idea. Perhaps you can leave that to someone else. Perhaps there is a new perspective that you have...
There’s a lot of light cast around during the PhD process. You shine a light on a topic you found, and create more when you write your thesis. You brighten up your thesis when you prepare for the viva. Your...
In Jenga, whatever your intentions, you might knock the tower down at any moment. Your actions or a misplacement by the last player might make things so unstable that the tower can only fall. It’s tempting to think of the...
One of the best reasons to annotate your thesis is to make things stand out. For example: Highlight key references and how you’ve used them; Underline your typos for easier correction later; Draw attention to jargon and specialist terms; Draw...
Outside of the usual typos and copyediting, my biggest corrections were to rewrite two chapters. They followed a similar flow, two case studies using a process I’d developed. My examiners were happy with the result, but not with how it...
If I’m working from home then I love to walk my daughter to nursery to start my day. After I’ve dropped her off, I’ll often continue my walk near the River Mersey. The view from the promenade looks towards Liverpool....
At some point you have to let go of your thesis. At some point it’s as good as it’s going to get. You can’t anticipate every comment you could get from examiners. You can’t write things in an effort to...
Worried about whether or not you’ve done enough prep? Worried if you find a reference after submission that seems like it would be a good addition to your thesis? Worried that there’s something else that you just have to do...
Think of your thesis as a star. It shines, it’s powerful. It’s there because you’ve set it out in the cosmos of your research field. Somewhere in that vast space are the works of your examiners. They’ve done more; their...
Two ideas that popped into my mind at a Viva Survivor workshop last week: If you and some colleagues are currently writing: go exploring in your department’s thesis collection. See what people have submitted in the last few years. Meet...