Viva - feeling relaxed!?!

S

Hi all, I have my viva in the next few days and I'm feeling relaxed!! I have been nauseated for a few days, with hear thumping and dread down to my socks but now it has completely passed. I think I'm resigned to the fact that I can do nothing about the things I am worrying about, my examiners have read it now and there is no way to take it back. But of course there are still questions :-). I've been finding some errors in the text (some things like a letter missing, an in text citation in the wrong order, a page number that hasn't printed etc.). So if these add up to major corrections (I don't think they will but humour me) and I go with a list of the corrections I've made, would the examiners pass me? barring any others problems of course. Part of me thinks that handing over a list of corrections straight off is just going to draw attention to them!
Ta!

B

I handed out a list of typos at the start of my viva. All the examiners were very grateful, and they were just added automatically to their list. No worries.

I was very relaxed before my viva, in fact in between submission and viva. I had a "Que sera sera" attitude. I'd done my best, they'd pretty much judge me on the thesis as submitted, and there was little I could do to change things. So no point making myself a nervous wreck by the viva ;-)

Good luck!

S

Hi Bilbo, thanks for the reply! The que sera approach does feel sooo much better than the 'end of the world is nigh' place I've just left. Found about 20 things that need changing in the first half of the thesis. Fingers crossed it won't reach 40 :$

N

Hi Siwee22,

Your typos sound very minor!

As for major corrections - this is only stuff that they think you'd have to take at least 3 mnths / 6 mnths, or whatever your uni rules are. Sounds like you coud do yours in less than an hour! But if (to 'humour you') they were on the fence, then I guess a list may make a difference

I had 5 pages of corrections / typos (I have dyslexia, but then I still should have noticed these) - I went in with this list, and they thought it funny. I think at 1st they thought I was saying 'you needn't bother with going over problems, 'cos I've sorted it!'. But it did show that I was commited to presenting a decent thesis (and I think it saved everyone time). I didn't mention these corrections until I'd been told I'd passed - I was basically waiting for the right moment, as I, too, didn't want to draw attention to them!

So take your list in, and wait til the right moment to mention them

Good luck!

P

Same feeling, my VIVA is in exactly one week and I have the "I cant be bothered attitude"... Probably I am a bit
too relaxed, have to get my act together. I guess I will also hand in the corrections at the beginning so that
they see that I had a look at it between submission and viva.

B

I am not recommending this just being honest.

My viva was scheduled for 8 weeks after my submission (this was last Monday). I took 3 weeks off after submission and then started studying. I stopped on the afternoon of my 2nd day with the recognition that I was just making myself extremely nervous and paranoid by finding typos etc. I, perhaps foolishly, said to myself that 'currently there is only a handful of people around who are as well read on this stuff as me; ergo I will not study'. I onfess that I did make a ritual of reading my thesis from cover to cover each Sunday for 5 weeks to keep it in mind (although I didn't do this the Sunday before the viva as each time it took me several days to calm down and stop cringing at how much I hated my own work).

I went to the viva relaxed and passed with no revisions. I got a few pages of typos and was told 'not to spend more than 24 hours on them'.

I will spend next Tuesday fixing the typos before sending a pdf to the binders. I am not trying to boast or anything just saying that for some people - like me - panicing over the viva might make things worse. I should probably add that I am 40 years old and was perhaps not as intimidated by my supervisors as someone younger may have been.

BB

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