Recently, I admitted that I am scared to open the thesis I submitted exactly a month ago, on the 5th of May. Today I did… and oh dear…
… yes, it did happen… I found a mistake… one that can easily be fixed… at least but it could have been avoided!!! I guess, only when you distance yourself from such a massive undertaking you can see your own mistakes. Anyway, it has happened now.
I decided to make a list in my blue notebook as I suspect that there will be (a few) more… at least I am sort of overcoming my fear of opening and reading the thesis.
Voila…
Mary, a dear colleague has given me loads of viva resources and I started reading these carefully. Tomorrow is the committee meeting that will or not approve the examiners. So soon, we will be able to arrange the viva day… when will it be? I was hoping before August but this might not be possible.
Yesterday I spoke with my dad and told him that I am worried that I will forget all the work I have done over the last 4.5 years… Anybody else has/had that feeling? I suspect that sharing this fear with my dad helped me realise that I need to get started. I need to get organised. And I started today.
After reading for the first time through the above mentioned viva resources, I decided to create a presentation that captures the overview of the study and then questions and answers and anything else I feel might be useful. A presentation might not be needed for the actual viva but the presentation format will help me prepare for the viva and print it out as flashcards. This is my idea at the moment. I will work through the resources and make sure that I will be able to respond to the sample questions, some of them appear more complex than others.
I need of course to familiarise myself with the viva format at Edinburgh Napier University but my understanding is that I will have the thesis with me, can add post-it notes, use and take notes too.
The presentation is no longer blank. The basics about the study are there already. I will continue working on the study overview and create shorter versions of it too. How about my thesis in a tweet? Then as a 2, 5 and 10 minute overview. Maybe I should record as audio too and share?
When this is done, I am going to filter out some of the key questions from the resources I have, add them to my flashcard set and attempt to respond. Further preparation is needed, I am sure. Everybody talks about a mock viva and it would be useful to organise something like this too and if I could watch or observe a viva that would also be helpful. Adam will be my first examiner. Maybe I can ask the boys too. Maybe all three of them together?
If you are reading this and have any suggestions from your personal experience, please let me know. Thank you so much.
Chrissi
Chrissi Nerantzi 