Hi there

I am new to this forum and have joined in a desperate attempt to get some advice/support/inspiration.

To cut a long story short and introduce myself: I'm in my 4th year and starting my writeup, there have been significant problems during my PhD regarding availability of essential facilities (further complicated and therefore not resolved by academic politics), meaning that the bulk of my data acquisition was only completed in the last 1/2 months (but still more to do), I have been given not so encouraging feedback on my ability to produce a thesis but in spite of these criticisms I am going to push on anyway, even though I hate my project (butnot the subject) and am struggling emotionally (everyday I go to sleep and wake up in tears), because there seems to be no point in quitting now.

I am hoping to finish labwork and shift into 'writing-only' mode soon, so that I can move in with my long term partner and have more emotional support while I finish. My funding expires in the next few months and there are alternate sources to explore, in the worst case scenario I can finish writing unfunded.

One question I have is in the scenario of a revise+resubmit viva outcome - is it possible to be asked to redo labwork? And if so, does this happen often?

While I can rewrite (if necessary) unfunded, I will not be able to afford extra labwork costs. I have a lot of data, however the extenuating circumstance in our facilities meant that experiment plans were less sophisticated than they could be (it was more of a "desperately get what you can get" situation). However, I think I can still write it up quite decently. Are examiners likely to consider extenuating circumstances that actively limit progress?

Anyway, thanks to anyone who bothered to read through my moan.
Hope to make some new friends here :)

I'm in a similar situation to you: 4th year science, now unfunded, and still doing some lab work.

I've not heard of anyone being asked to redo a lot of lab work (because they know that's going to be difficult as people might not have funding etc) so I imagine it's quite rare.

I think it is more 'write up what you have got' and that will be ok, as you have described.

Hi Meiwei, I'm at the same stage as you too. My labwork just finished not long before christmas and now I have masses of data to analyse and write up and only 3 months of funding left eek! I had heaps of motivation in the lab but at a computer...I struggle a bit!

I have not heard of anyone being asked to re-do labwork, I have heard of people de-doing statistical analyses etc but that can all be done at a computer at home. I think it's best not to think of the outcome of the viva just yet, get your head down and concentrate on handing in =) I also had experiments which didn't go to plan, I thought I'd get the chance to do 2-3 really good experiments for one chapter and it turned out to be 1 as the others failed to show any results. But I've been told this is fine! In the end it's not all about the results, it's about showing your learning process and that you can be a good researcher. I hope anyway!