Believe me i know exactly how you feel. I was in the exact situation. I felt like I wanna exit the room and give up the study all together.

Take all these negative energy and use them to push yourself forward. In my case, I work on my corrections straight away as I could not sleep well that night. Maybe take a few days off to calm yourself down. Focus on the corrections and not the feeling of unfairness.

I am so sorry for you and I can totally understand your feeling now as I had almost the same situation. My external examiner was exactly the same like yours. Worse still, the chairperson in my viva acted like an examiner and started question my research as well.

As mentioned by others, you may consult the postgrad admin or the head of postgrad program in your fac and try discuss with them by addressing the unfairness of your viva. I don't think you can get a amended result but there is no harm trying.

As for the re-submission, don't be too saddened by it as the corrections may not be as bad as you think. I was given a 9 month major correction and I was able to correct it in less than 1 month. Discuss with your supervisors thoroughly regarding the correction part and, more importantly, external examiner. Get a better external examiner!

Lastly, see this as a challenge for you. You have gone through hell so things will get better from now on. Be strong and good luck.

Hi Sneaks, can you send me your presentation ppt? Thank you

I have very bad experience with my supervisor as well. In truth, I still don't think my main supervisor know what have I done.

Talking to your supervisors may be the best bet. Try to establish good communication with them (my main supervisor never answer my call, sms, whatsapp as well). Engage them passively and apologize if you need to. In my case, sometimes I just meet him in his room and let him know what have you done and show him some result.

Next, you may talk to course facilitator (postgrad facilitator). Let them know the whole situation and see can they do (in my case, nothing). See if a meeting can be arranged to discuss the communication issue between you and your supervisors.

Last resort may be change of supervisor(s). Go talk to other profs and see what they think about your work.

Anyway, I fully understand your situation and was in your situation throughout the course of my phd study. I cannot offer much help except saying good luck and believe in yourself. Threat all difficulties in life as challenges.

Today is by far the worst day of my life. I just went through VIVA 15 hours ago and it was absolutely terrible.

First, I submitted my thesis on 30th May 2017 but due to my topic and country, my VIVA is on the 1 year anniversary of my submission date so you can imagine my rust on the thesis itself. It lasted 3 hours. The external examiner was horrible. He only focused on methodology part and ask very detailed and difficult questions including asking me to compare a paper is very marginally related to my topic (not even closely related) that i read years ago and have totally forgot about (not included in my list of reference). Furthermore, he questioned my thesis to the point of doubting whether I am the one running the empirical analysis. I even had to ran through the entire estimation process (luckily I brought the laptop that has all of the softwares required). At 1 point he referred to certain part of my thesis that requires some additional model specifications as "that part is bullshit" and said why are you so bad? I lost my confidence completely to the point that I could not even answer some simple questions after that.

Luckily the internal examiner was much milder and only require some further explanation on certain parts and correct some mistakes. However the internal examiner seemed to be influenced by the external and became quite critical in the end.

Then came another bad news: My faculty has adopted a new policy in which I need to rearrange the entire thesis to a different format.

In the end, I need to do some major correction and need to send the amended copy to the internal only (does that count as resubmit?) in 9 months time. Thankfully I do not need to send to the external for approval. Still, this is the worst experience (by far) in my entire life. I honestly wish to just let this damn thesis go and forget about academia completely and move on. Thank you all for reading my long rant.

Today is by far the worst day of my life. I just went through VIVA 15 hours ago and it was absolutely terrible. (warning: I have not slept for >24 hours so beware of high amount of typos and badly structured sentences)

First, I submitted my thesis on 30th May 2017 but due to my topic and country (rare topic + no expert in my country), my VIVA is on the 1 year anniversary of my submission date so you can imagine my rust on the thesis itself. It lasted 3 hours. The external examiner was horrible. He only focused on methodology part and ask very detailed and difficult questions including asking me to compare a paper is very marginally related to my topic (not even closely related) that i read years ago and have totally forgot about (not included in my list of reference). Furthermore, he questioned my thesis to the point of doubting whether I am the one running the empirical analysis. I even had to ran through the entire estimation process (luckily I brought the laptop that has all of the softwares required). At 1 point he referred to certain part of my thesis that requires some additional model specifications as "that part is bullshit" and said why are you so bad? I lost my confidence completely to the point that I could not even answer some simple questions after that.

Luckily the internal examiner was much milder and only require some further explanation on certain parts and correct some mistakes. However the internal examiner seemed to be influenced by the external and became quite critical in the end.

Then came another bad news: My faculty has adopted a new policy in which I need to rearrange the entire thesis to a different format.

In the end, I need to do some major correction and need to send the amended copy to the internal only (does that count as resubmit?) in 9 months time. Thankfully I do not need to send to the external for approval. Still, this is the worst experience (by far) in my entire life. I honestly wish to just let this damn thesis go and forget about academia completely and move on. Thank you all for reading my long rant.