Saturday, 9 February 2013

Confidence plummeting

Oh there is too big a gap until my viva to dwell!

I can't stop thinking about it and am getting really worked up about it.  I am going to have to get out my thesis tomorrow I think and look through it, then if it is that bad at least I know what I am working with...  but actually I hope that looking through it will be pleasantly surprising.  We shall see.

I had a bitchy email from the uni hub yesterday too saying that I had done the thesis wrong - the pagination was not to uni requirements and the front cover needed to be re-done.  I am really sad about this.  Gutted actually!  They said they would send it to the examiners anyway (wtf?!  Only now?!  I handed it in over five weeks ago :()  but when I hand it in proper I will have to have it done properly.  There was a link in the email to a page that said how the uni want the thesis to be done, which I could really have done with before I submitted but no bugger showed it to me.  I feel let down and just pissed off.  I had info from last year about how to submit which I don't think I was expected to know was all of a sudden out of date.  I only had that info because a friend (who submitted last year using these guidelines) sent it to me.  I searched the uni website for something like this to no avail.  I searched in the research handbook, nothing.  I asked the uni admin, nothing.  My sup was pretty chilled about how to hand it in and even had me changing the margin and my front cover from the requirements I had, which made me think that it must all be 'guidelines' rather than 'requirements'.  In the end I had two front covers, and the one that has been criticised I didn't even design!  I have never seen it before!

On the one hand I am berating myself for not knowing this info.  Why didn't I find it?  I have written a PhD thesis ffs, I should be able to format it properly!  how lazy/slack of me not to have done it right :(.  But on the other hand I am aware that if I looked for it, but didn't find it, how could I have known it was there?  Maybe someone could have pointed it in my direction?  I guess this is what happens when you are out of Uni for a long time.  I dunno, but I can't help but feel like I have been ticked off and it sets a grim precedent for the viva :(

Generally I am grumpy and stressy at the mo, with moving house etc, and am terrified of the viva and all the work I will have to do afterwards.  Hopefully when I am in the new house and mostly unpacked I shall be able to breathe out and focus on the viva stuff for a week or two with a clearer head... 

I really really want it over with now so I can get one with the corrections and my life :)  Oh that would be marvellous!

x J

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