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.