- 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
