[Astronomy] Defeating the Viva Voce

It is complete! My PhD is over, and I can finally relax for a couple of days.

I've been in St Andrews all week, and have just got on the train back to Coventry after staying at my Granny's last night. My viva voce was on Tuesday afternoon, and I spent Wednesday to Friday making the corrections that my examiners asked for. It was a pretty intense week, and I'm glad it's over. For so many reasons.

(Credit: Figure-of-L on deviantart.com)

So, the viva voce. I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I asked some of my friends for advice on preparation beforehand, and all of them gave me pretty similar advice, which was reassuring. Basically, they said not to worry too much about it, and to try and relax. I know what I did, and I know how I did it, so I should know what I'm talking about. The two areas they said to revise were the introduction and any areas which overlapped with my examiners' expertise/work; sensible advice, since those are the bits that they were likely to know what questions to ask me! So that's what I did. I also read through my thesis a few times. On the first pass I made notes on areas that I thought I needed a few extra notes, and on the second pass I then added additional material in the margins.

(Credit: phdcomics.com)

The viva itself was a very odd experience, and I'm not sure how I feel about it even now. One of the things my friend Craig said to me was that I'd find myself enjoying it more than I expected to, and that I'd be disappointed if I didn't get a grilling. And you know what, he was right.

It didn't start well. I completely fluffed up the basic background questions on exoplanet transit lightcurves and the information that you can get out of them. Which really put me on the back foot, and I wasn't feeling great about the whole experience. Actually, I sort of reminded me of my driving test, where I messed up at the start and got rather down about it, but (spoiler) it went alright in the end. My examiners tried to help me through it, but that made me feel worse in some ways when I still couldn't quite get it. But after that it got steadily better. I'm not quite sure when, but at some point I realised that it was much more of a discussion about my work than them interrogating me, and that they didn't know all of the answers to their own questions. When that happened I felt much better about the whole process, and relaxed a little.

(Credit: keepcalmandposters.com)

So after 3 hours and 45 minutes I ended up with minor corrections. Which is fairly standard really, and what I was expecting and hoping to get. I managed to get all of them done by 5pm on Friday, and sent them to my examiners just before I left for my Granny's. Technically I had three months to do the corrections, but I wanted to make sure that I got them done as soon as possible to improve my chances of graduating in November. In order for that to happen, the final examiners reports need to be handed in by Wednesday, so fingers crossed.

Part of me is still thinking 'was that it' to be honest. After all I'd heard about the viva, all I'd been told to expect, and all of the horror stories, I feel like the whole thing was a bit of an anticlimax. I still don't completely feel that the work I've done, and by extension my thesis, is worthy of a PhD. And I certainly don't feel that my viva was sufficient to test whether I was good enough to get one. Maybe I'll feel better in a while, but for now it still seems very odd, and as though I've not really earned the title of Doctor.

Just call my Doc Brown. I'm tempted to put this on my new office door!