These past days working on my corrections have been tough. Why, they were only minor corrections? Well, yes there were only minor corrections in the official..you’ve based your PhD subject to these changes in three months minor corrections, but I didn’t expect them to be so draining to complete.
The thought of opening my thesis document again and going through the pages bit by bit to add in/delete as required…reword here and there wasn’t a great one. It took be a few days after I intended to start on my corrections to get to the point of opening my document and getting on with it. I’d done all my planning in my notebook and scrawled across the paper copy of my thesis that I had for my viva, but opening the document felt different.
Part of the problem is me being me. I could have addressed my corrections in a minimal way, they would have maybe taken me a day or two maximum to address them, including the planning and proof reading. But, I know I wouldn’t have been happy with my thesis if that’s what I’d done.
I am not disappointed with the thesis I submitted originally, though it was far from perfect. I am proud of what I achieved given the circumstances (cheers COVID) and the knowledge I had. I don’t genuinely feel that I could have submitted a substantially better thesis at the time of submission. However, given the information I now know from the discussions at my viva, I do feel that if I didn’t address those things that I would be doing myself a disservice. I genuinely believe that the mandatory (and suggested) corrections from my examiners make my thesis stronger. I feel like they gave me their feedback after a lot of a through and effort on their part, and I don’t want that expertise and effort to go to waste.
So, I chose to reshuffle my thesis based on viva conversations and my examiners direct feedback. I combined and reduced three chapters into one, to really highlight the work of most value, amongst other things, but this felt like the biggest task. At least it’s the one I found most difficult – but now instead of three weak-ish chapters I have one, smaller, but hopefully stronger one. I also reframed the focus of my thesis – I didn’t rewrite the entire thing, most of the content is still the same (if not a bit shorter) and in some cases rearranged. I had to tamper a little with each chapter to make sure the story worked and I look at it now with a sense of pride that I feel my examiners instilled in me by highlighting the strengths within my thesis.
I make it sound like a breeze in this last paragraph, but that is written with the rose-tinted glasses of someone who has finished their draft and is feeling pretty relaxed now. My overall feelings after my viva were definitely positive, I knew I had corrections but I was proud of my achievement, focused on my strengths and was grateful for the position I was in. Reading through the pre-viva reports from my examiners and their marked up manuscripts made all those feelings disappear quicker than they arrived.
I want to make clear: the comments weren’t mean or unfair or anything. They were honest, constructive and sometimes phrased much nicer than they could have been. It was an emotional response not a rational one, to see listed so many development areas, things to improve etc. It made me wonder why they’d even passed me in the first place, if it was really that bad?! I didn’t stay in that miserable state long, thanks to a chat with my husband who reminded me that they wouldn’t pass me if it wasn’t good enough and focused my attention back on the positive points raised too. The joint report from the examiners was probably what I should have focused on, to be honest: with the feedback less granular it felt easier to look at them in the context of my thesis as a whole. That there were some strong parts, but there were other parts that weren’t so strong which minimised the impact of the good stuff.
Looking over this past couple of weeks (I can’t believe that is all it has been!) I think the anxieties that my thesis triggered before submission were back out in the open having to go back and open the document and address the changes. That box I had tucked away burst open and it’s like those feelings never went away. I saw the errors and the places where I could do more work or change things, but in the end…those things don’t matter. If you have a couple of small typos in your ENTIRE thesis – does that take away from the overall message? Not for anyone reading that matters, that’s for sure.
As someone on Twitter said to me.. “Finish, move on, do fun stuff”. This thesis does not define me, it is a platform from which I will develop and grow. In years to come, no one is going to be digging out my thesis to decide my fate. It’s like when we do our GCSEs and we feel like they’re the biggest thing in the world to tackle, but as we grow up we realise that you just have to get through them well enough to get to the next stage in life.
I have addressed all of the mandatory corrections my examiners laid out (obviously, I guess) and all of the suggested corrections to at least some extent. I haven’t done everything that could possibly be done, I haven’t dealt with every comment in each of the marked up manuscripts. I could sit here and feel guilty about this, but to be honest a) if they were big enough and important enough they would have been mandatory corrections and b) I’ve got to do what I can manage (mentally/emotionally) and c) life has to go on. I don’t mean to sound like I’m dismissing those points at all. I just know that these corrections could go on forever, but also that the thesis/viva stress has taken a toll on my mental health. How I feel today compared to the past few days…it’s like I’m a new woman. I’ve done as much as I feel I have it in me to do, that’s all I can ask of myself.
Shruti's PhD 