I submitted my thesis in end of June and I am waiting for my viva. I don't even know the date yet but I presume it will be around November. I have started a post-doc in the meantime and that is going smoothly.

The issue is, I am very nervous about my upcoming viva and my thesis. Weeks go by where I don't think about my doctoral work and life is good. But then, I suddenly think about limitations in my thesis, things I should've done, things that could've been potentially wrong and all I can think about is my examiners finding mistakes in my work etc. etc.

It doesn't help that my internal examiner is a PI in my new lab and he is known to be very thorough so my anxiety relating to my thesis is exacerbated by this knowledge. I therefore keep thinking about the embarrassment of potentially being the only person in my lab ever to get major corrections and other ridiculous negative thoughts.

How have others coped with these issues? I'm sure I'm not alone with these thoughts. There must be other ways of coping than just being very anxious intermittently until my viva. I honestly need closure from my PhD thesis to move on with my life and feel I won't get it until my viva is done and I've handed in corrections.

Hey,

I am very close to finishing my thesis. Literally just waiting for the green light from my primary supervisor as he reads my first chapter and conclusions.

One of my chapters is based on a publication of mine. When proof-reading last night, I realised that one figure was never referenced in text and is not really needed. The figure is a scatter plot of some errors versus some other metric. What is important from this figure, is the correlation between the variables. These are all listed in text and these stats are referred to later in the chapter.

I have decided to remove the figure as I think it helps with the formatting of the chapter and doesn't add any substantial information.

Is this okay to do? Do thesis chapters have to be exactly the same as the papers they are based on? I guess I am examined on my thesis, so if they really want it, I can add it in later?

Thank you for the reply.

I agree with you and my supervisor mentioned the same. I cracked and e-mailed him this morning, quite early. I told him what had happened, that I found the chapter weak and asked for his suggestion.

He told me that I should basically mention it in the discussion and make clear how I have built on this earlier work to perform much more thorough work, that self-criticism in the discussion of this chapter pointing to new work is fine. However, he mentioned that I should no overdo the criticism!

I think that is the best course of action. There isn't anything I can do now, and I have no time to re-run experiments. Theoretically, nothing changes except the strength of the experiment.

I still feel a bit stressed about it but feel a lot better now that I've told my supervisor. I presume examiners look for self-critical reflection of work in a thesis? The quality of my work in my 1st year is drastically different than the work I am now performing.

Hey,

I'm panicking quite a bit right now.

I'm close to finishing my thesis. I am editing one of the chapters, which is based on work I did about 3-4 years ago in my first year when I understood things a little less than I do now.

I was doing some image classification and I generated some features. I have realised that two features (x1 and x2) I used are in fact equivalent. For example, let's say you found two ways to measure the density of a material. I used both values, which were meant to express different properties but in fact, were both density. I think I got confused over the mathematical formulation of what I was working in and probably wasn't as rigorous as I should have been.

My thesis chapters are self-contained and anything in this chapter does not affect the remaining 4 methods chapters.

This error doesn't change the results since theoretically, it doesn't add new (and wrong) information to the model. The overall conclusion/discussion of that chapter remains unchanged (in the most part).

However, I am really really scared that this will definitely turn up in my viva. I am going to speak to my supervisor next week when he's back from holiday but I was wondering if anybody experienced the same or something similar?

Do I add an extra paragraph to my discussion to state that in fact, x1 and x2 are equivalent? I can't just pretend I don't know then if brought up by an examiner, be like "yes, upon reflection, these are the same, but it doesn't change x and y, it just means two features are colinear". Or should I just ignore it, and just declare it when prompted?

In the end, I don't think it is a major error as it doesn't invalidate anything, it just weakens the experiment, which I find is weak enough as it is, compared to all my other work. But I am still worried.

Thanks!