Still sinking in!

Hi to all again!

Yes, as I had promised earlier on to update you about the outcome of 'D dreaded Day'.....

I PASSED!!


The night before my viva

It has been such a long time since I had sat for an exam. The fact that it was an oral examination made it twice as bad.

I read through all I could, tried to summarise all 200 journals into a logical story in my head. Thought of potential questions the examiners might ask and how to answer them tactfully if I didn't really know the answers to them. Practised a 10-minute introduction/summary to my entire PhD project in front of the mirror. I figured that if I could impress the examiners with an exciting summary of my findings, it would hopefully give a good start to the viva session and cover up any lack of knowledge that may potentially arise.

Did manage to get some sleep although I found myself waking up trying to answer a question about 'Why PKC inhibitor, Ro318220, only partially inhibited p42/p44 MAPK activation?'.........


D-Day

Woke up at 8am, not feeling like waking up at all to be honest. Remember wishing that I didn't have to wait till 2pm to take the exam. Had overnight rice+dishes for lunch eventhough I wasn't hungry. I didn't want to go into the exam room with an empty stomach with the risk of it growling loudly in the midst of my viva. Would have been totally embarrassing! hehe...

Went to Uni at 1pm. Went straight to my supervisor's office to say hi and that I was about. Then realised that my external examiner was having coffee with him so I took the opportunity to introduce myself. He seemed like a nice person so I felt slightly better.

During the viva session - I think I was pretty lucky to have examiners (two examiners conducted the session - an internal examiner from Strathclyde Uni and an external examiner from Glasgow Uni) who were really nice and reassuring. I've heard nightmare stories about examiners interrogating students about their results and all but there was none of that during my viva. Most of the session was more discussion-based than direct Q&A. Nonetheless there was still a lot of probing and feedback for answers about potential future experiments to perform and suggesting potential techniques to examine them. There even came a point where I was debating with the examiners, who didn't quite agree with a particular idea of mine. Thankfully, they respected my view and didn't give me too hard a time.

My viva lasted for 2 hours and 45 minutes. At some points it went through quite quickly but at times it felt like forever (especially during the debate). At the end of the viva, I was told to leave the room for 3 minutes to allow the examiners to grade me. When I was asked to re-enter the room 3 minutes later, the external examiner announce that they had agreed to award me with the award of.....(actually pausing awhile to imaginary drumrolls) Doctorate of Philosophy! It was quite a amusing affair (the end of the viva) seeing how cute my examiners were reacting. They actually came up and gave me hugs and pecks on my cheek. So as I said earlier, yes, I believe I had been blessed with very kind and gracious examiners.

Post-viva

After the viva, I rushed to tell the good news to my supervisors and colleagues, who greeted me with hugs. We had some champagne at the 4th floor social area of the university to celebrate (which I thought was so sweet of them to arrange). After that, went out for dinner and more drinks with some people in the department (it was really more of an excuse for most of them to drink and party then celebrate my success! hahaa...).

So all ends well and I'm quite chuffed about how things have turned out. Did all my corrections during the weekend (examiners wanted me to add some details to my methods and materials chapter as well as correct some spelling errors) and have just gotten my internal examiner to OK my corrections. So will print the corrected copy out tomorrow and get it bound for final submission to the university registry.

I have yet to feel the full excitement of completing my PhD (I'm still recuperating from revision exhaustion, really) but the feeling is slowly sinking in. I believe I can FINALLY let my hair down.....