Viva - Not A Good Result

Yesterday was my first viva, even that should give you a clue to the result. I did not write yesterday as there was too much emotion working through me. However after a second disturbed night with signs of anxiety attack around it I decided that going into work today was not sensible and that I needed for the sake of work as much as anything to put some work into getting the emotion hormones out of my system. After a lie in therefore I am going to try and give as clear an account as I can of what happened yesterday.

Pictorial Map of Thesis

I think the story probably starts about 5pm on Monday. That was the time when I stopped working on the pictorial map of my thesis. It is not finished and you will see lots of places where there is only a pencil drawing and towards the end the page references and the theorists are much more sketchy.  The aim is to give me a way to think through what is where in my thesis. Anyway stopping it then was to allow me time to organise myself for yesterday. There  were a number of things I needed to do; not least of which was get the pictorial map down to my table.  The other thing was to pack my bag, make sure I had the details of things like train times, have a bath and get an early night.

In a sense that map makes the basic problem with my thesis visible. There are at least three separate ideas worthy of a thesis within that map which accounts for its business. The first comes from Congregational Studies and is well within the normal sort of theses arguments. Basically, it is an argument that even in a situation like those I studied it is not possible to separate community from worship without doing damage to your understandings of a congregations Identity. The second is a methodological one that seeks to explore more fully the way that scientific understanding of flows changes our understanding of congregations if we explore it. The third and final one relates most strongly to Congregational Identity, is the most developed of the three and is the one I intended to go with. However, the other two muddy the water. The result even though I was not admitting it was that I was not confident in my thesis and felt it needed another go through. Indeed had even started to think about doing this.

Anyway I awoke at 6:00 a.m. yesterday quite easily, although the night had been disturbed, mainly by stomach ache as if I had been doing too many sit-ups on a full stomach before bed. Not good but also not my normal night before nerves which are sort of flurries of excitement that twirl like dervishes in my abdomen.  Getting up at 6:00 a.m. meant I had lots of time to settle myself for the day, and dress with extra care.

I walked down to the station for just after 9:30 a.m. although the train did not leave until 9:55 a.m..  I picked up my ticket. I got on the train and instead of getting out my thesis I got out my Kindle and read "The Solace of Fierce Landscapes". It was deliberate, I rarely settle to fiction these days, the entry into the narrative is something that feels too difficult/dangerous to do. I find myself actually pulling back. So I chose a book on spirituality and I chose one on deserts because there is something within me that is attracted to them. Yet I am not sure that it was a good idea on the way to a viva.  I think it challenged me too much when I needed just diverting.

I got to Birmingham New Street and the first sign of nerves occurred. I found that I could not drink coffee from Costa, officially because it was too hot but also because my throat constricted as I tried to sip it. I did give in a go for half an hour or so, but it did not cool down enough so I left it on the side and went to catch the train out to the nearest station to where my viva was to be held. I crossed across the road (very busy) and had a sandwich at the local Sainsbury's supermarket. I checked email and such and put my phone onto silent. Then at 1:00 p.m. I walked up the road to the venue and arrived at 1:15 p.m.

a tree in the grassland

This was too early so I went for an hexplore (basically a diversion around the area to keep me from turning up too early, I spell it with a "h" to differentiate it from proper planned exploration trips). I found that just down the road is a piece of suburban grassland. It had a stream passing through, a path, quite a few trees and a couple of benches. Really not enough to really be a park but enough of space to have a brief walk and to sit in the sunshine for a while. I also had a chat with a man who was out walking his dog. Well he was sitting on a bench and the dog was enjoying exploring the surroundings.  The tree in the photo caught my eye,  possibly because it looks like a tree costume  with its short sprouting foliage after clearly having had its main boughs cut off.

Anyway I returned to the venue and let the reception know I was there. I asked if I could go to the loo. That was a mistake as it was past the dining room just as my examiners were coming out. This fussed me somewhat. Then went to sit and wait  in the lounge to be called.

It was not long before the chair came to collect me. The welcome was fine, but the setup was adversarial at the start with the table wider than was necessary. I would also say that both my examiners looked grey.  The first question was one of the ones that you expect in that it was a question about the importance of my thesis. Sitting back now I realize that I made mistakes right out at this point. The reason was that I focused on the third concept. What I should have done is placed that within the terms of doing an ethnography!

Another problem I ran into was their interpretation of footnotes. They thought I was dismissing people if I put them in footnotes, often I was not. The problem was that to deal comprehensively with that person would actually have taken three or four pages of diversion into material that was not directly relevant to the thesis. Two debates within sociology of religion that are actually so strongly connected with the tradition that a straight sociological reading of them is not possible and I would have to spend time unpacking the way that it interacts with the tradition. Yet I want to indicate I am aware of the debates. Therefore, the footnotes are not dismissals, but signs that there is a larger and much more complex debate here to be had that is not within the scope of the thesis.

What also happened is this linked into my insecurity about the main point of my thesis. This was poor going. I should also have corrected my external when she started talking about believing and not belonging. My thesis is NOT about that, even though hers was. My argument would be that basically if you want to understand belonging you actually need to look at people who do belong. After all it is not good investigating women's experience by only talking to men! I also am aware that my ability to give a succinct definition of a what I meant as a technology was not in the thesis draft.

In the methodology, I did not transcribe all my interviews. I did do about the first half dozen. There are pretty good reasons. I have a mild dyslexia related problem, and this has implications. First I have a very strong mental recall, I have to have, I cannot rely on myself to pick up books to do it. Secondly I find listening to the recordings easier than reading the transcripts. Yes I have used them even when I have not listened to them for months.  Thirdly transcribing is difficult, ten times the length of the interview and the length varies from 15 minutes to 2 hours with most around an hour. With working four days a week, trying to be in the field as much as possible and keeping the reading and writing, I am afraid that transcription took a low priority. What I did do was often write extensive notes when I got in, this often reviewed the content of the interview as well as the context.  I felt justified in making this decision.

Anyway I was shown out to the garden room where my supervisor was marking scripts. My view was that I had actually enjoyed it but that I expected to be given three to four months revisions.

I was then called back in and my supervisor came too. The faces of both my examiners were a lot healthier colour. I have got to get the next part right.

Firstly I was treated as an "experienced ethnographer".  That is not just an ethnographer but one with some maturity. It was also clear that they thought that my thesis contained "originality" indeed part of the result was to allow me to clarify and strengthen my assertion of that originality. They also were struck by my use of the word "grief" to describe my leaving of the congregations and felt I was still too close to the fieldwork. They however had ten major recommendations to make. Of these three involve a significant amount of work. The largest and the one that I can think of least gain for is that they want me to transcribe all my interviews. To reflect this they want quotes within my thesis from the interviews and also a table with an account of who was analysed. I am seriously thinking of putting quite long quotes into the thesis (not full interviews), but times when people have told a whole story that is relevant to the thesis. This gives the reader more context and indeed will be able to see what was said and what I thought it meant next to each other.

The second significant part was a section doing a literature review on the topics of believing and belonging. I think I will need to do some theology of belief and see if I can explain why I find questionnaire approaches to belief decidedly lacking.  I can only write a personal creed if I can destabilise it and if I can't my honest creed is "God". Everything apart from that needs an essay with footnotes on footnotes to try to capture the nature of God. I am not totally apophatic in my theological bent, but I have been involved in metaphysical theological discussion since a teenager and my concepts of God reflect this. So if I honestly answer the questions "Do you believe that God or gods exists?" then my answer is "no" because existence is a property of the created not the creator. This sort of causes problems.

The final major change they wanted  was for me to take the chapter on flows and incorporate it into the other chapters and cut it by about half. That actually is only a couple of weeks work, it will take some care and I will need to decide which part of the flows chapter to the three descriptive chapters. That gives another shape to them and I will need to think this through.

There were seven others, some of them were fairly short pieces of work; some of them I could sit down and do tomorrow without difficulty, some are quite expensive but do not actually require a lot of extra work by me. None of the requirement in anyway suggested that I should change the basic thesis.

Anyway Martin and I left after brief greetings between Martin and my examiners. We then spent an hour debriefing. It took some time. If I really felt like it I could I think of asked for a major re-write instead with the same corrections to be done!!! The grounds being that on the basis of what the examiners had said I had met the examination requirements.  In many senses the only advantage of this would be less work for them and me not having to have a second viva. There will however come out a two or three reports and one thing they were clear about was that I needed a break to gain distance from my fieldwork. I am therefore taking one until mid August by which time I hope to have properly digested the reports and will meet with my supervisor to discuss a way forward. In some sense the debrief the discussion was very like the talk you have once a paper was rejected and I am pretty used to doing that. In the end you have to sit down and make the changes. This took an hour or more and I then walked back to the station and caught a train back to New Street. Actually remembered the Station has a loo and also sold Coke which as I was exhausted was what I needed at that point.

At New Street I bought a bacon butty and a bottle of water and sat down to inform the world of the outcome. I was using my tablet and my personal wifi network hub not my mobile phone. There is a corner by Costas on the new concourse I tend to sit in. I also realised I did not want to sit down with the book I was reading this morning so I went to W H Smiths and bought "And the Mountains Echoed". It was the best there was in that small W H Smiths and I did not spot that it was another desert book! I think there is a theme there, but it really too much. I would join the narrative only to find that I could not sustain it. So I got the train back and at Sheffield station bought a G&T from M&S then got a taxi home. Then rang my parents as my mobile phone was indicating its battery was low when I got to Birmingham New Street and I knew they would want to talk. A friend rang later on to check how I was.

Last night I did not sleep very well, a weird mix of nerves, the old fashioned thrill dervishes, anxiety attacks and a racing mind. One of the reasons for writing this at length. I decided that this morning I was going to ring in sick, the combination of being exhausted and on an adrenalin rush is not a good mix.

My reflections so far are that I need to have over prepared with my writing. I have to be confident that it is more than good enough before I am well able to stand up viva situations. Secondly I wonder, it is just a vague possibility, that the resubmission was to give me the full year to make the corrections as my examiners feel that having time is important for the changes they want.