Do you feel like it's nonsense because 1) you can see specific flaws in the arguments, 2) you think none of it matters or 3) you just feel detached from and confused/distressed by it? The first is normal as you gain mastery of the field, and the second is quite common during the 2nd year doldrums. The third is similar, but it can shade into real anxiety and depression and is worth keeping an eye on from a mental health perspective. Feeling deadened or suddenly unable to care is a depression symprom and sometimes difficulty in focusing / concentrating can be linked as well.

Congratulations Dr faded!!! I'm so pleased you have your degree and that your new examiners had the grace to note, in your report, that the corrections you were asked to make were ideologically motivated. Have a great celebration and do give yourself credit for everything you have achieved in the last eight years. Well done!!

So sorry to hear that you are still waiting, faded. I hope you have plenty of emotional support from friends and family, and wish you best of luck with your job interviews. I think the fact that you have handled all this without giving up speaks volumes about how committed you are and how capable, and I hope you can soon move on to the next stage of the academic career you deserve.

Sorry to hear you are feeling unmotivated; it's very common to feel that way after all the adrenaline and anxiety of the initial submission and viva. Most people never want to touch the thesis again, which is why corrections that go beyond fixing typos tend to be such a slog.
I think the only answer is to work without waiting for the feeling of motivation. Just pick a time of day for working on corrections, set a timer for 25-45 minute intervals during that slot and work on your discussion chapter until time is up. Divorcing my decision to write from my feelings about writing was the most important skill I learned during my PhD. Now that I am done, I do often feel enthusiastic about my research but it's still done wonders for my productivity that I write regularly every day whether I feel motivated or not. The slog of corrections are a good opportunity to practice that skill.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is it, faded07. I can't imagine how you have found the patience and resiliency to keep going through all this - no one has done more to earn that Dr title than you and I hope you will have it very soon now.

I had six months of corrections and my report was about a page and a half in length.

Also the fact that your supervisor is retired doesn't matter. The point of the complaint is not for him to be reprimanded, it's for you to show you didn't have a fair shot during the viva - the university can give you more time and perhaps another supervisor during the further corrections if you can persuade them that he was absent/negligent.

I meant lack of guidance from your primary supervisor. They should have worked with you on interpreting the report and reviewing your corrected thesis - it sounds like that didn't happen.

I'm so sorry this has happened to you. What a terrible shock. If you feel that the supervision you received was inadequate, you can appeal the result under university procedures, on the basis that you didn't have enough guidance on how to do the corrections. That could get you more time, if the appeal succeeds, to make further corrections and try for the PhD. If I were you, I would go see a student union representative and find out what the process is for an appeal. It will burn some bridges if you do appeal - your supervisor may not like it, especially if your main complaint is lack of attention on his part - but I think it is probably the best way forward from here, if you still want the PhD.

I also think you should get your ducks in a row for an official appeal, first via the university process and then via the OIAHE ombudsman. I have never heard of so much incompetence, malice, and nonsense in my life. If there is no chance of a new examiner, I think perhaps an appeal of the results is in order - on the grounds of procedural unfairness, given the delay in communicating the first report to you and in the handling of the revisions from them on - and your supervisor should know that you are looking seriously at a formal complaint to the ombudsman.

Is there any hope of appointing a different external at this stage? I do think you deserve your PhD after everything, but it seems submitting more revisions to this person is a recipe for more delay. Can you have a face to face meeting with your supervisor in which you lay out, in objective factual language, the timeline from your viva to now and suggest that - given all the delays and mistakes - you feel you are now entitled to have your work assessed by a third person? That seems to me the best avenue to pursue.

I'm so sorry to hear this. It's completely unacceptable behaviour by your examiners. I hope your supervisor is fighting hard for you beind the scenes. Do you have a counsellor or therapist to talk to about this? It sounds so stressful.

Before you make the decision to leave - a big life decision - is it worth seeing a counsellor or therapist to explore your motivation and your options? It could be that the things you are finding it hard to cope with are aspects of university life, or PhD life, that would come up in similar ways anywhere else that you did a PhD, including London. For example, if the issue is the feeling that the place is hyper-competitive and puts a lot of pressure on you, Cambridge may put exceptional pressure on for a taught programme but a PhD may be similar anywhere (certainly in London). So it may be that the best thing you could do for yourself is to learn how to ignore or shrug off pressure of that kind and find out ways to be happy in an intense academic environment. Or if it's something Cambridge-specific, like the culture of the place or your college, or the college system, or the city, it's worth figuring out with a counsellor if these are things you can live with or non-negotiables. I definitely think that, in a choice between prestige and happiness, you should choose happiness! But I wonder if it's true that happiness for you has to mean a big change like this - change of course, change of place - and I would do a bit more thinking about what you need to make you happy before taking any steps.

Hi excommunicate,

I'm so sorry you are going through this. It certainly would not be possible at my uni for minor corrections to be changed to major corrections, let alone to an MPhil award. Whether it's possible at yours depends on the specific regulations, but it sounds inherently strange and not-ok to me. Have you spoken to anyone at your student union? It sounds to me like you will certainly have grounds to appeal any bad outcome, here, given the inconsistent messages that you have received and it will be helpful to have a student union representative advising you at that stage. Right now, I would focus mainly on getting the corrections done and maximising my chances of the PhD rather than thinking too much about things that could go wrong later down the line. You can get your ducks in a row for the appeal if they try to change the rules on you again, which hopefully wouldn't happen. But I do still suggest taking this specific question to your student union and also, perhaps, getting some administrative person at your department to tell you exactly what the regulations are for the award of a PhD and viva outcomes at your uni.

Good luck! I know it feels horrible now but you will get through this.

There's meetup.com, which may have some groups of interest to you in your location. The best thing is to go to a few different events, with different groups, and see if there's any people you click with; you could then make separate plans (coffee, pub etc) with them. The same is true for uni events; I think they don't constitute a social life in themselves but following up on interesting acquaintances from these events can produce friendships.