Blog: The Beginning Of The End

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I had a bit of an Emotional Milestone yesterday, as one of my Big Two Projects* moved ever closer to its glorious end.

For LO! I had what turned out to be my VERY LAST EVER Phd Supervisory Meeting. This is where I get together with my two PhD supervisors to talk through where the thesis is at, get feedback, and plan what to do next. Yesterday's meeting was the 38th one we've had over the past five years, but by the end of it we agreed that we would meet NO MORE, for LO! (again) the thesis had got to the point where I only needed to make a few adjustments and could the SUBMIT it. Crikey!

This is not the end of the whole thing, just yet, but it is certainly the BEGINNING of the end. Once I've made the changes and submitted it we have to give the examiners about six weeks to READ the whole thing (it's currently around 100,000 words long and some of the words themselves are also very long) before we have a VIVA. Some people see this as a terrifying ordeal in which World Experts QUIZ you, trying to catch you out on MISTAKES, but personally I'm really looking forward to it, as I am envisaging it as three people who HAVE to listen to me DRONING ON about Doctor Doom and Transmedia for AT LEAST an hour without asking me to stop! Even better, we are having a MOCK Viva before then, when a whole other three people have to listen to me go on about it - what could possibly be more fun?

The VIVA decides whether I get a PhD or not (or whether I do, but have to make yet more changes first), but if they say YES one way or the other all I need to do is hand in a final version and I can ponce around saying "DOCTOR Hibbett actually, not that I like to go on about it" etc etc for the rest of my born days. I'm looking forward to it, OBVS, but I'm also going to miss the sesssions with my DELIGHTFUL supervisors. It really has been an awful lot of fun!

(* the other Big Project is a Secret Thing which I REALLY hope I can also start showing off about by the end of the year. Be assured, as soon as I CAN, I very much WILL!)

posted 23/9/2021 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

You are right, PhD viva you have experts in your field trapped in a room to talk about you! Nothing narcissistic about it at all, I loved it despite the stress.
posted 24/9/2021 by

Great work NrDr Hibbett. I want to say something witty about showing them what's under the hood of your Viva, but I'm not sure the joke's quite there yet...
posted 24/9/2021 by Alex D.

However your viva goes, rest content in the knowledge that it was all DOOOOOMED from the start,
posted 25/9/2021 by is this real?

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