28 Juni, 2008

even more excitement

yesterday was one of the most stressful days so far of my PhD career, one of my office mates had her viva in the afternoon; I had no idea how nervous I would be for her. Now this is making me worry even more about my viva which will be coming up sometime in the next year. I can't believe how stressful it was for us sitting there waiting for her to come out and tell us she passed, so I don't even want to imagine how stressful it was for her. But it was such a relief when she came out after three (!!!!) hours of examination with only very minor corrections. We all thought that a viva on a Friday afternoon wouldn't take the whole three hours, but it did, started at 2:15pm and she only come out at 5:15 but with such good news. I have to admit I am a bit jealous that she is done now... oh well, I will get there, after all she started a whole year ahead of me so I still have time to finish, plus I have until the end of September 2009. But first I need to concentrate on getting that conference paper done so it will be included in the programme for the Rome conference in September. It is so nice, people keep telling me about all the things I need to go see when I am there... I really hope I get some time to see some of the city during the conference and not just on the two extra days, but we shall see.

2 Kommentare:

Anonym hat gesagt…

Thanks for the comment on my blog, Ivonne! I didn't do focus groups as such, but I did do a few interviews with more than one person, and I think my top tip would be for you to be really clear at the start that they should only speak one at a time! It would have saved me a ton of hassle if I'd done that!

I so know what you mean about starting to freak out about the viva. My office mate is a year ahead of me so will have to leave the office in September, which will leave me as the senior PG there. Eek! I'm starting seriously writing up in September, my money runs out in Sept 09 and I'm hoping to have submitted by December 09. Scary stuff!

Rome is fabulous, I'm sure you'll love it (another top tip: take care crossing the road - I have never been so scared in all my life as I was whenever I tried to cross the road in Rome!). I've had a paper accepted for a conference in December in Helsinki, so I'm really excited about that, although I'm sure I'll be really stressed when I come to start writing it and try to remember what I was thinking about when I submitted the abstract! But, I think after conferences in Cambridge, Nottingham and Birmingham I'm entitled to go somewhere a bit more glamorous!!

Anonym hat gesagt…

Whoops that was a long comment!