Corrections: Vague questions by examiners

M

I have been working on the corrections of my thesis and some of the questions / corrections given to me by my examiners are extremely vague and do not specify in detail what exactly needs doing... There is a lot of waffle in their comments...
The wording and the expressions they use are vague, comments are extremely generic and their research questions range from not-clear to non-existent...

I asked the supervisor about what he thinks they mean and he was also extremely baffled... He has been guestimating several points the examiners have written on that report...

Am I only one facing this problem? Can I interpret their questions / request for corrections the way I want... or at least the way my supervisor understands them? Are their generic questions and comments pro or con my resubmission? At the end of the day, if I resubmit and they say to me that this is not exactly what they wanted me to do in a certain case I could say to them that a) This is how I interpreted the request and b) this is how my supervisor interpreted their request... and advised me to handle this... On the day of the viva there was nothing said about these requests in order to enlighten the examiners report. I also have a second question but this will be a second post.

D

I had a question about the corrections and sent an email to the internal who would be approving the changes. What I did was apologise for contacting her but asked would she mind clarifying a point for me, which she did. Could you do this? However, if you do make sure you put everything in one email as he/she may not be receptive to emails going back and forwards and try to keep things brief, professional and to the point.

Avatar for Mackem_Beefy

Quote From delta:

I had a question about the corrections and sent an email to the internal who would be approving the changes. What I did was apologise for contacting her but asked would she mind clarifying a point for me, which she did. Could you do this? However, if you do make sure you put everything in one email as he/she may not be receptive to emails going back and forwards and try to keep things brief, professional and to the point.


Seriously, do exactly as Delta says.

However, there is the temptation to issue a list of corrections back to the examiners for their report!!! :-):-):-)


Ian (Mackem_Beefy)

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