Viva Two

My viva was unusual in a number of ways, before the day itself, I knew that:

• my supervisor was not going to be around. I had arranged for my friend Fleur to provide moral support
• my external examiner was coming in through Skype
• my chair had been changed to someone who knew nothing about the subject area

I arranged to meet with Fleur at New Street Station. It has changed dramatically that even though I had done a fair bit of looking at the plans in the last couple of weeks I was bewildered at first. I had arranged to meet up with Fleur at 12:30 pm at Costa Coffee.  As I was about an hour early I decided to look around the building. There was a multitude of top end shops rather similar to those at St Pancras' in London. I had checked on the plans to check that there were not two Costa Coffee and so was slightly perturbed when I discovered that there was a yet unopened Costa coffee in the shopping area of the station. The good news was that Fleur was sitting in the Costa Coffee I had planned when I turned up at 12:20 pm!

I had been saving up points on my Costa card and was able to buy us both lunch with what was on there.  It is not that Costa is the best food there as New Street now has endless smart eateries, but it is serviceable and decent and gave us sustenance.

Afterward we got the train to Selly Oak, Fleur uses public transport more than I do and walked from there up to Woodbrooke Hall. As we walked up to Woodbrooke she talked about the research she was doing on John Oman, including he stayed in a house between the Selly Oak Colleges and Woodbrooke Hall. There are not many houses in between today and the one that is has a blue plaque on it to a leading Quaker at the time.

We arrived at about one thirty and after finding the garden room we went into the garden and Fleur asked me to show her my thesis. This was brilliant move from my perspective. Fleur has limited eye-sight and by doing this I had  to explain my thesis to Fleur not assuming she could read it. That got me talkin about my thesis. It is odd but unless I am in thesis talking mode I find it quite hard to talk about my thesis.The result was that I was had really switched mental channels by the time I went into my thesis. However we quickly run out of time and I have to head back to the room only there is still my internal examiner and me present. It is not until about ten past we learn that the chair is delayed due to traffic and the viva will not start until half past.

So I go back to Fleur who I find reading a display on Woodbrooke during the first world war. The fact that Fleur is partially sighted has never stopped her reading. It is just an non negotiable. In some ways it is quite a compliment that she will let me read for her at times. The problem with the delays is they are bitty so I have we briefly talk for ten minutes and I need to be heading back. Some of the reason I do the search is I feel a discomfit by my internal examiner with me being in the room. Not really surprised, we are met for a purpose and the purpose cannot occur until other people are present. it is a bit like making small talk with your surgeon before a major operation.

The viva gets going just after 2:30 pm. My chair definitely sees herself there for me, but as she does not know how my internal and external have planned the viva she is almost immediately sidelined.  Both my examiners thanked me for making the changes and also for providing a cover sheet. Questions included the reason I had called my final chapter "epilogue" rather than "conclusion". At one stage I am asked whether I deliberately set out to not provide a normal thesis. I replied that I had originally intended to and had the set chapters in the outline originally. I could have been stronger, there are too many students I have advised to write in the normal form that I found it ironic that my thesis seemed to obdurately keep away from that form. However the content was such that I concluded nothing in the final chapter and calling it a "conclusion" therefore was misleading.

Another question was with respect to my use of Weber or rather my lack of use. I finally got what the problem was and then it was clear. The assumption was that I thought because Weber was influenced by the tradition his understanding was invalid. This was not the case. The problem was circularity, Weber speaks as someone who really though not holding to the Christian faith, was strongly influenced by and then strongly influenced the tradition I was exploring ethnographically. The problem therefore was circularity, and that I was using the tradition to explain the tradition. If I was looking at a distinctly different tradition e.g. Roman Catholicism then using Weber would indeed be interesting. It really is quite peculiar reading Weber because he is "formed" (in quotes because I am not sure that is the right word, maybe molded/shaped etc) by the tradition. Things he says just fit with the patterns that are part of the tradition that it is quite peculiar. Anyway I strongly believe that new knowledge at least culturally is generated when we bring those that are different together.

At about this point it the questionner was changed to my internal examiner. His questions in someways were more technical. He asked about how the fact that I had I had been an insider had affected my ethnography. Was there really a difference between "native" and "outsider" ethnography. I think I was able to answer that question with reference to the difference in similar settings between mine and those of my supervisior. My supervisor had found no mention of worship within the setting but I had found a clear practical discourse. The fact that the discourse was practical and therefore only of interest to people who may be practitioners meant that I as an insider had a different experience to my supervisor who was an outsider. It takes years to cross that field of expertise and I still do not know how congregations perceive that someone has that experience but they do.

There was another round of questions from each side. As I got to the end the questions became less challenging. I was for instance asked why I thought my thinking on flows was minor. This was a matter of familiarity and the fact that the models were often secondary to the finding. My internal examiner felt however that that in particular needed publishing. What you do by instinct never feels as special as the stuff you struggle to grasp, so for me the struggle is to link it with the current debate. The stuff I naturally do is explore the metaphor that I use for thinking about the topic. That is the way my brain works and I only semi believe everyone elses does not automatically. Then I must remember how much better than reality Fleur thinks my French is. She is brilliant at French while I scraped O'level.

Then I was asked to leave, I found Fleur this time in the lounge and we just got a coffee when my internal examiner came back. We went in. That my internal specifically invited Fleur was a relief. It was the one stage where they could have denied her access and yet if she was to support me properly then she needed access. I was hoping and knowing that I had performed well in the viva half expecting a pass with minor corrections. They could not at this viva award major corrections, but I suspected that limited corrections could be required. I was therefore surprised when I got a pass with no corrections although typographical errors would need correcting. The suggestion by my chair that I had a holiday was not just totally out of context, what sort of university person takes a holiday in October, but had Fleur desperately not looking in my direction as it was so out of context.

We went back into the lounge and let the examination committee finish its business in private. Fleur commented that I was sparkling when I came out of the viva. Most people at Woodbrooke are quiet and so it was a complete contrast. Also that she was suspicious that I had passed as my examiner had been "coy" when he came to collect us for the result. I interpret this as trying to keep back the result because it is in an extent the external examiners role. It took a while even for us to start to think about heading back home. Indeed far longer than I think with the previous bad viva result.

Shortly after 4:00 pm we started heading back to New Street. Fleur said she wanted to buy champagne to celebrate and I thought with all the posh shops there must be somewhere at New Street selling it. The trains to New Street were crowded with commuter traffic but we got there and found a stall  called Fizzi sellingN proscecco on the upper fall with strawberries in. Just as we ordered their barrel of white ran out so we had rose. Oddly enough it went to our heads so we ended up back in Costa ordering coffees before I saw Fleur to the platform for her train

Really the Last Supervision!

Sometimes you get things wrong. My previous Supervision was actually my last supervision before submitting and today I had a pre-viva supervision. If this sounds different to last time then that is because the time between submission and viva. Firstly it has been longer about four months as opposed to just six weeks last time. Secondly there has been a lot of difficulties with the arrangements. So much so that there is a Small chance that it will be cancelled on the day itself. The reason being that my external examiner may not, for legitimate reasons, be able to make it.

Today I overslept, partly due to waking with nerves in the middle of the night. I did set my alarm but did not really register it until half an hour after it started going off. It is one of the dawn simulators and I am such a light sleeper that usually the click of the bulb starting to glow wakes me.Not so today. l did not realise how late it was until notices for the day started going off on my phone. However, I realised that I had plenty of leeway built into the day. As it was I got to the station in plenty of time to pick up my ticket. I then discovered that the train before mine was running late. The question was whether l caught it or waited for mine. I decided l had the time and I would risk my train being held up by the late train. As it turned out the delay was negligible.

Birmingham New Street is in the final stages of its transformation which meant I was disorientated again and there were workmen everywhere. Still found WH Smiths were selling Graze products including protein nuts and as I was not feeling like lunch this was a useful substitute. I then caught the train out to University and set about finding the ERI Building which took me down the road by the hospital which is lined with horse chestnut trees. It is the conker season and inevitably I picked up a pocketful. As I was ridiculously early (12:30 for 2:00 meeting) when l found the ER1 Building I walked past and went on an explore. Well, sort of, the next building l encountered was the Computer centre which I had 'visited about 3 years ago for work. So I had obviously been in the area before.

Walking on past l encountered Winterbourne House and Garden. The opportunity to sit quietly in the garden seemed to be ideal so I paid the entrance fee and went in. They have a popular restaurant but the quiet of grass and big trees were more important to me at the time. There is also a path from the garden to a large pond with ducks on. Most ducks were at the far side and without binoculars I could not identify the actual species. There were a couple of coots nesting near the path. I also found the loos so used these t prepare for the meeting then realised it was a quarter to two and I needed to get back to the ERI.

I arrived at the ERI building at about 1:55 pm and got to the meeting place about five minutes before my supervisor. He had not booked a room but, fortunately, it was the week before pre-sess so no rooms were booked! That meant we just went into the first available room. I think that Martin had realised by the time that we got to the supervision that quite a bit of my being awkward was actually strategic rather than me just being contrary. The talk was mainly on the discussion for my viva including the need for me to have to know pretty well what my corrections were as if the examiners went beyond that I had to pull them back in line.

That does not mean that I have a lazy two weeks although I was pretty quick on answering questions today. I need to be up to speed on the major thinkers in my thesis. I need to know my thesis and I need to know what correction I have made. It was also clear that while the thesis was there, there is also work that needs doing before the whole work is publishable. Quite often in a book that is a book of the thesis there is a ghost of the thesis hanging around. Here I am going to have to exorcise the ghost rather more thoroughly as there is new material but it is only becoming accessible now which means it cannot go into the thesis.

Finally, I gave my supervisor a secondhand book. It was one of those occasions when something had come into my possession and I knew that it was destined for someone else, I was but the carrier. Oddly when I normally get these I pass them on as quickly as possible but this time something stayed my instinct until this supervision. The passing on of the book today did more than it would have done earlier and I was right about my supervisor valuing it. 

The supervision over and me feeling happier about my viva than I have done for several weeks, I went to Costas and got myself a meatball wrap and a soya latte before catching the train home. The train home was busier than I was expecting but then I do not normally get the train on a Friday. 

So twelve days to my viva!

The owls in the pictures are  the two of the statutes that are part of the Big Hoot that I saw today.

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.

Viva Prep at Birmingham

Today I went to see my supervisor at Birmingham for a Viva Preparation session. He offered me one when I submitted my thesis and I took him up on it. However the only date that we both could make was today. Today's session was more relaxed than a normal one

In the weeks since the last blog I have been working through my thesis. The process has focused on annotating the text with post-it notes and pencil. There are three different sorts of annotations. Simple textual correction are corrected in pencil. l will produce a list of these corrections for the examiners, but they can then be put to one side. Then there are the explanations and more in depth corrections that cover actual substantive errors. These are put on yellow post it notes. When I really need to make sure these are mentioned I have also put a yellow tab mark at the top. Finally, there are the key points of the thesis. These are on pink post it notes. However, these are divided into major and minor with pink tabs for the major ones. There are far more pink tabs than yellow, but I suspect about an equal number of post it notes in each colour. I am also doing mindmaps of each chapter. I will also do a diagrammatic picture of the thesis and produce an index for my own use.

Anyway the reason for me writing this is that today I went to see my supervisor to do viva prep.l needed two things from him. First was local information on how vivas work at Birmingham. I know the general stuff, but each university has its own idiosyncracies and thus I needed to know what these were for Birmingham. There is nothing off the wall, but the detail was important. Indeed we got at one stage into a discussion over the affiliated colleges to Sheffield University. The second was to get me talking around my thesis. It actually seems to come quite easily in that I can put things into words. My main difficulty, as Martin spotted, is referencing my thesis. I am going to have to do some thinking. Up today l have assumed that page number was the sensible way to do this but I am realising that there maybe a more natural way. I suspect that the full thesis diagram might produce this and therefore becomes more important than the indexes.

The day was as sunny as it usually is when I go to Birmingham. Many students were out on the grass and few were in the computer rooms. I suspect that it is a pre-exam week although some exams were in progress. It is now less than a fortnight to my viva and as l walked back to the train station it just might be my last time as a student. Birmingham New Street is still a mess and I am not sure whether I should be glad that I will not have to deal with it regularly over the next few months or sorry that after putting up with it in this state I will not automatically see the new look when finished.

Starting preparing for Viva

All right I realise I should have posted here when I heard, but I forgot in the long list of places to post. My viva is on Tuesday 3rd June. That is relatively quick, the University of Birmingham gives two months to arrange for dates and actually my viva is within those two months. In fact it is so soon that my supervisor had advised me to only start chasing my internal the week before if I had not heard.

For those not familiar with the viva process, there is no reason why outside academia should be, it is an oral examination that is the final part of the examining process.  It is based on the thesis that is submitted and it also an assessment of your ability as an academic in the discipline your thesis is in. There is a description of  the precise procedure on the University of Birmingham website so if you want more detail.

I took a fortnight off, well except for agreeing to the examination date, the examiners and sending an electronic copy for my external examiner. It is daft, I have printed and bound two copies at around fifteen pounds each and then the examiner wants it electronically. I actually did that twice as the first time I did it the old fashioned way by printing the Word file to pdf (No I am not going to send my examiner a Word file, as sure as eggs are eggs, if I did when she opened it on her computer it would muck up the layout on several pages immediately).

Before I submitted I wondered how submitting would hit me. I have a friend who submitted in November and she took to cleaning the house completely. I thought if I did that it might be a good thing. However it has not. What has happened is I suddenly have been wanting lots of exercise. The major desire is for walking, but lots of walking and working do not mix. I find if I mix fairly frequent walks with other exercise I just about have it under control. I have therefore been on two long walks in the last month (and have another planned for tomorrow), been swimming thrice and joined a gym and got a routine to help me get fit. I just hope I can keep it going through viva preparation and revisions. Actually in the run up to viva there is a good incentive to keep me going as exercise lowers anxiety levels. There were signs that anxiety was getting to silly levels prior to submission so I did need to do something and the choice was between seeing the doctor or taking exercise and exercise won.

However this last week I have started the viva preparation. It has been fairly relaxed to date, I have set a date with my supervisor to do Viva preparation. I have also started a bit of examiner stalking and went to training at the University of Sheffield (my employer) on Viva Preparation. The training was Viva Survivor led by Nathan Ryder. I was the only part timer in my session (he led two sessions at Sheffield on Friday).  I was attending in my own time as Friday is my day off. The session was good in that it gave us some idea what a Viva might be like. Let me explain, despite the information above, there is very little information given to students on what the viva is actually like. This left me in a state of anxiety/excitedness that is not dissimilar to the state when you are hauled up in a cart on a big dipper before a big drop. You know the drop is coming but have little how deep or how twisted it is. Now it is as if someone has offered you a rough sketch map of what is ahead.

I am also reading Rowena Murray's book How to Survive your Viva which is good and gives very different information. The two do not really overlap, at least as far as I can see, except when discussing what you should take into your viva. Then the lists are identical.  Also, I have been doing some gentle examiner stalking. This has been purchasing some books by them. Several times during my thesis I hunted for books involving Peter Collins. There was good reason for this, from the book chapters of his, I knew that his PhD thesis was probably the closest to mine of any researcher. So I am slightly miffed to find a book published in 2008 that seems relevant, and to only find it when I am stalking one of my examiners. A hint that came up at Viva Survivor, but not from Nathan, was to actually search for podcasts from you examiners. I have found that both of mine have done podcasts and there is a sense in which listening to the podcasts you get a feel for their thought that going through books does not give.

I also have been out to buy paper supplies to start annotating my thesis. I hope to get that started this week and buying clothes for it. Nothing special really but I have not bought summer clothes this year for work and last years are beginning to look tatty. Actually I am aiming at the top end of Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes but not party stuff or highly formal. Being dressed well and comfortably is for me, as for many females, a way to boost our morale.

Oh the other thing I had not realised is how much talking there is to be done in a viva by the candidate (I am glad I am in Humanities as two hours sounds quite long enough). I am going to have to check out techniques to deal with a loss of voice; as one of my anxiety symptoms is that I loose my voice. I have techniques which I have developed over the years; slowing down, deliberately projecting (so treating a small room as if it is a lecture room with hundred of people there) and making sure my face can be clearly seen.

I will add the picture tomorrow after my walk.