PostDoc Discussion Forum

I passed my PhD viva on Friday. Actually, when I sat down with the examiners and the chair, the external told me that I have passed and that now we should imagine that we are in a café talking about the research improvements. After one hour, I was told it was enough. The whole discussion was actually very enjoyable. They asked me to come back after 30 minutes and they said they only wanted more cultural-historical context but that the rest was very good. That I should re-write the intro adding this context. The devolution at the end lasted literally, 5 minutes but, and this is where I need advice: THEY GAVE ME SIX MONTHS!!! Could anyone be able to shed some light one this, because I'm very shocked!

Thank you

Having been on the examiner side, often as an external you're a bit vexed by the individual "Uni rules vs Uni culture". Logic somewhat dictates you give a good candidate as much time as possible to do the corrections, because - why not? Culture sometimes dictates it's seen 'worse' as having 6-month corrections instead of 3-month, because it somehow implies the work was worse and therefore needs more time.

It's probably the case, as I've seen happen, the chair just asked the examiners along the lines of 'should we give them 3 months, or 6?'. The examiners responded just by giving you more time, because it makes life easier for you, rather than as a judgment of quality. It might have been the case as well, as I've become more sensitive to as an examiner, that they asked you 'what next', and if you said you have a new role, etc., with all the stresses that come with that, it makes (some) examiners inclined to give more time than if someone will purely do nothing but work on corrections.

In all cases, I'd consider the correction duration as a limit, not a target, and because of the above, if you feel you can comfortably do them in 2 months, I wouldn't hesitate to ask your supervisor for feedback then if they're happy go ahead and submit ahead of time.