It’s been so long since I last updated this space
that it took three attempts to get my password right just to log in here. Off
the top of my head I couldn’t actually remember when I’d last rambled on about
my PhD but, if Blogger records are anything to go by, it looks like it was back
in September 2017 – which must mean that it was immediately before or
immediately after handing in the dreaded thesis.
If you’re reading this and we’re friends on Facebook,
or you follow me on one social media channel or another, then you’ll already
know the outcome. If by some minor chance you have stumbled across this blog
without knowing me – or you’ve started to follow this blog, without really knowing
who I am – then: SURPRISE! I PASSED MY PHD!
But there were one or two steps between then and
now so kick back and let me fill you in (or, alternatively, you could click the
top right X and call it a day; I have, after all, given you the ending to this
story already).
I handed in my thesis in late September – it was
a Thursday, and it was quite sunny for the time of year; I can even tell you
what outfit that I was wearing when I submitted my work (isn’t it weird what
sticks with you?). On the Tuesday after I handed in my thesis, I started
lecturing. Despite this lecturing work being one day a week, I absolutely
convinced myself that I had somehow managed to skip over the emotional and
psychological lull that follows a thesis submission – the one that everyone had
warned me would come.
For those of you reading who haven’t been warned
of this, or haven’t experienced it, I’m going to be frank with you. It turns out
that finishing your PhD is actually one of the hardest parts of doing a goddamn
PhD because when it goes – when this thing that has dominated your life for anywhere
between three and six years just disappears, it leaves a hole that you will
frantically try and fill (even though you have nothing to hand to fill it with,
per se, because everything you have you’ve already given entirely to this PhD
project – which is no longer even there). It’s a bitter, bitter moment that I
truly believe most long-term students must experience.
But, though I waited, it didn’t come…
What did come was my Viva date: December 18th.
Again – in case some of you reading don’t know already – a Viva is when your
internal examiner and your external examiner get together and fling a
shit-tonne of questions in your direction to see how well you can defend your
thesis. It sounds more terrifying than it is – and I’m not just saying that to
compensate for the wild sense of impending doom that I’ve described above. Even
though your Viva is stressful and even though you put hours and hours of extra
work into preparing for it, it’s actually… okay. I’m not going to go as far as
enjoyable – because I would have happily accepted my pass via a nicely worded
letter, rather than a face to face showdown – but it certainly wasn’t as bad as
I had convinced myself it would be.
A few weeks before my Viva my supervisor and I
had a frank and honest discussion about the weaknesses in my work, and we meticulously
planned the ways in which I could prepare to defend these issues, when they
were mentioned by one or both examiners. On the day itself, none of the topics that we had prepared
for were mentioned – none of them! Let
that be another lesson for you.
What did happen, to my utter bliss and delight,
was that all of the information that I had been ferreting away in the back of
my brain for the last three years came flooding out, and when they asked me a
question, any question, I said:
Instead of making more work for myself, I promised
myself an hour a day where I would bit by bit deal with the seven issues that I
needed to fix. I went through their recommendations, I did extra research, I
tabbed up my thesis to within an of its life (and my own, I think) and then, my
‘hour a day’ turned into: I’m going to smash this out in an afternoon. I won’t
lie and tell you it was that easy because it sure as hell wasn’t; it was five
and a half hours of hair-pulling and argh-ing at my computer screen as I tried
to work out how the hell I had ever sounded like an academic on paper, and how
the hell I would ever match that tone again. It felt just like old times…
I submitted my amendments on a Friday morning –
completed with a document that outlined each and every change, down to the page
number, which I then coded into lined and underlined entries so my internal examiner
could distinguish between the actual edits and the typographical ones (I hadn’t
tabbed and highlighted and colour coded my way through this doctorate just to
let things slide at the final hurdle). It took my examiner one weekend to read
the changes – and I will never be able to express my authentic and genuine gratitude
that he didn’t keep me waiting even longer – and first thing on the Monday
morning after submitting my changes, I pulled up at work, checked my emails,
and saw:
‘I am pleased to advise you that you have
qualified for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy…’
I then went into the same students who had wished
me luck on the morning of my Viva – bless their souls for remembering – and told
them that it was official. And the panic started some time after that…
It isn’t a state of discontent or disappointment;
I have no urge to do another PhD, although I have registered my interest for
another Masters (that’s another post for another time), but there is definitely
something – unsettling? The sense that something has gone, something has
finished, and the more I consider it in this level of detail, the more I think
that finishing a PhD might be something like finishing a long-term relationship
with a partner that you’re still fond of, despite both of you knowing that you’ve
come to the end of the line. There are no bad feelings – in fact, you even miss
them sometimes, but you also know that it was time for both of you to part
ways, and that when you look back fondly, you should never consider it as more
than an enjoyable period of time which has now passed…
I’ve lost myself in that metaphor somewhere, but
you get the idea.
So here I am, in the transition period which I
thought had started some months ago but, on reflection, I think has probably
only really started now. But, as is the case with all endings, something else
is starting – has started already, even. And at least whatever happens next and
whatever I do with this godforsaken PhD, I’ll be doing with DR printed on my
bank card.
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