And I fight to live another PhD day

I’m freeeee!! I had the viva part of my Early Stage Assessment yesterday and I’m relieved to say that I passed. I say relieved rather than any other adjective because that was the overwhelming feeling I had yesterday. That and wanting to sleep.

Everyone was telling me that no one fails and it’d be fine, that I’d breeze through it, but somehow that made things worse. It kind of escalated the pressure, because what if I was that bad that I didn’t “breeze through?”

It turns out I didn’t, but I’m taking that as a good thing. I found the entire process pretty tough: the report, the preparation and design of the presentation, and the Q&A. It’s all been a large learning curve for me but I’ve grown so much through the process and with the feedback I’ve got that I’m set to grow a lot further.

There were tears. Not in the room, but when they sent me out so they could deliberate. It was partly relief tears but also the fear that I hadn’t done enough. I didn’t come out feeling like I’d done my best and portrayed as much knowledge as I had. I got flustered and tongue-tied and couldn’t answer some of the simplest engineering questions (which I should and do know!). It was the fear that I would fail because I hadn’t shown that I was good enough rather than not being good enough.

My assessors were actually really nice; whilst I felt super nervous because I was being assessed, I really felt like they were there to understand how good I was rather than catch me out on things I didn’t know. Both assessors stayed for an extra 20-30 minutes to give me more detailed feedback, which they really didn’t have to do. They were very good at making sure that I knew I passed before starting the feedback and re-iterating that the process is there to help “lift me up” rather than bring me down. I guess that sounds potentially like they were babying me, but I tell you I needed the explicit reassurance. I was overwhelmed and my brain was foggy. I’m glad I took a notepad and pen to write down their feedback. I knew before I went in that whatever feedback I got I wouldn’t process because I’d be either so elated and shocked that everything went amazingly well (ha!) or I’d be super foggy from emotion and fear. I’m really glad I did take the notes, because I’m not entirely sure I can remember what was said.

Top tip: always write down feedback as you get it so you can look back later.

I came out in a bit of disbelief with my mind buzzing, but one of the others in my office said the magic words: “do you want a cup of tea?”. That was definitely my turning point. I had a cup of tea, chatted a bit, and then got down to my reflection. I wrote up my notes and came up with an action plan. Suddenly, my head was clearer though still full and I was ready to feel the positives of passing my ESA.

I’m not meant to be the finished article right now, if I was I wouldn’t still be a PhD student. That’s the whole point of the process and I’d rather know now that I’ve got areas to develop than hit my real viva at the end of my PhD and fail/have many major corrections.

Shruti Turner (@ShrutiTurner) is a PhD Researcher at Imperial College London. This story was published on October 5, 2018, on Shruti’s blog, Shruti’s PhD (available here), and has been republished here with her permission.