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Can I do my revisions in less than two weeks?

T

Hi, long time reader, first time poster.

I've seriously dropped the ball. In Feb of this year I was awarded my PhD subject to minor revisions (with a 6 month deadline). It is now roughly 2 weeks until I have to send my updated thesis to my internal examiner, and I have about 95 per cent of the required revisionS to do.

I have been working in a non-related job (48 hours per) week since Jan, on top of that, I have a wife and a two year old son. These are my excuses for not starting the revisions. The days that I did have free to focus on the thesis, I stared at the laptop screen wondering how I would ever start the list, never mind finish it. I have never had such little motivation. I feel like I was out of my depth to finish the thesis in the first instance. Now I have to add more to it.

I'm not sure why I'm posting this. Looking for tips, I guess. But, really, i think I may have said goodbye to my PhD.

I did, and you can too! In my case it was in order to meet a deadline to graduate this summer rather than next year.
Can you take any leave in the next fortnight to get it done?
How much is the workload? Your supervisor may be able to advise on how much each correction (if it's a question of additional info to put in) actually should look like, eg 1 paragraph, 1 page, etc.
What helped me was making a realistic but still fairly challenging list of corrections I was going to do every day, and tick them off as I went through them. It will probably have to include weekends, I suppose that's the sacrifice in the next couple of weeks.
List all the corrections which you may need to take advice from (eg from your supervisor), email or set up a meeting to discuss them ASAP, and in the meantime get on with the more straightforward ones.
Remember you have done very well indeed to submit a thesis at the end of the slog, which has been deemed worthy of a PhD subject to this last bit. Don't throw it away now! You don't need to :-)
Best of luck and let us know how you get on.

I

Don’t worry. It’s certainly doable. 14 days is a lot if you work for about 8-10 hours on these corrections. Take half a day and make a list of where the revisions are to be made. When you have that in front of you, then go one by one and take about half and hour to do the easy ones and about 2 hours at maximum to do the conceptual ones. If you feel stuck at any change, leave it for discussion with the supervisor (make a list of queries for the supervisor), and then after that do these in a day as that would be much quicker. A friend of mine followed this pattern and was able to do the 6 months revisions in 10 days. I also helped her with spelling corrections and a few minor things so if you have that kind of support mechanism use that. Also another suggestion is to control your nerves and just think that you have to spend productive hours in the library and then you will be there.
Best of luck with submission! You’ll definitely do it in time!

T

Guys, sorry for taking so long to reply, thank you for the pep talks. I'm happy to report that I did it!! And, I've already been informed that the revised thesis is approved, I'm officially a Doc!!

K

Congratulations! Any more tips on how you managed to do it?

T

The major problem was I kept looking at the full list of revisions and panicking. So I literally cut the list into strips(per revision) and gave them to my wife to hand me one at a time. Also, red bull and wine gums!

I

Here you go. Congratulations!!!

Great job!! Congratulations Thomas!!! :-)

Well done, knew you would do it :-)

K

Nice one. I'm going to try the Wine Gums Method. Chocolate eclairs have only got me so far.

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