Hi everyone

This is my first post on here and I am feeling really awful about how my viva went yesterday.
My viva lasted 7.5 hours! It would have gone on longer if my internal hadn't said his last train was at 18:20!
Needless to say after 4 hours I was completely mentally drained and really struggled to answer the questions being asked of me. I even burst out crying in front of my supervisor when the examiners stopped for lunch it was that bad.
The outcome was a conditional offer of the award of PhD subject to major corrections. But at my uni I only get 3 months to do these and being self-funded I've had to take a part time retail job so I can afford to live.
I'm really stressing at how much work I will have to do in the next 3 months and feeling like I just want to pack it all in and move on. I can't even celebrate "passing" the viva because I feel so down and deflated after the ordeal yesterday.
I'm just wondering if anyone else has faced something like this and any advice would be gravely appreciated.

Hannah

Congratulations Hannah a) on surviving b) on clearly having such an interesting thesis that they could talk so long about it and c) on the good result! First, wait until you get the formal report - that should list exactly what changes need to be made. If you've got 3 months they will despite being labelled major be relatively limited. When you get the report, agree with your supervisor what you are going to do on each point and be incredibly systematic. Make a timetable, keep track of exactly where in the thesis you have addressed each point and just work through them. In some ways as they're broken down into chunks of work, it's easier to combine with a p/t job than writing a chapter from scratch. You can do this - one last push and you're there.

Look you have done amazingly well considering the difficult situation! Take a couple of days off and get back to it after a break. Congratulations for having gone so far and keep going.

Well done for getting this far! I also had a harrowing viva and I know how soul destroying it is, but you will feel better about it soon. Just follow bewildered's and Jamie's advice and it will be done in no time.