Guest bloggers Julia Römer and Marly Muudeni Samuel reflect on their experiences of completing a PhD.

I don’t know what I hoped would happen after clicking ‘send’ and my PhD submission documents disappearing in the email ether. Maybe a cannon of confetti, some fireworks or any form of indication that I did it? And yet, sitting at home, next to me, some tea mugs grown old from last night, I found myself procrastinating for about 3 hours to press the button on the already drafted email, ready to be sent to the admin team and my supervisors. I kept finding mistakes and asking myself, “is it really ready?”, with many “what if” thoughts going through my mind. After contemplating and overthinking, I eventually clicked ‘send’, waited for a few seconds, and thought: “is that it?” A rhetorical question, obviously. Finishing up years of work within seconds. At least, that is how it felt in the moment. 

Actually, it did take a bit longer to get this PhD over the finishing line. The submission process wasn’t complete yet. In the afternoon, I collected my printed and bound copies and brought them into the office. Recalling my supervisor later jokingly asking whether I’ve submitted in kilos or pages, I carried the heavy copies into town. I left years of work on a shelf next to the kind assistant’s desk. Not just literally, but I physically did feel so much lighter and relieved, leaving the copies and all the weight there. I grabbed my water bottle from inside my backpack, seeing how much space the copies filled up before, I was leaving now with an empty one. And that’s how I felt too – like the backpack – just empty, without many words to describe this moment. Afterwards, friends, relatives, staff and other students congratulated me on this ‘massive milestone’ and wondered how I must feel: ‘definitely relieved, right?’ or ‘proud’, ‘ready for some holidays?’. Those words did not stick with me. I felt like they were congratulating someone else. Somehow, I was not able to process this achievement of submitting the work on the day, just yet. 

Post-submission, then, I found myself following my supervisor’s advice to ‘take now a restful break’, especially getting away from the screen and enjoying some good time off before returning to prepare for the PhD Viva a few months later. That was the plan, at least. And while this blog post will not turn into an acknowledgement section, see my PhD thesis for this, I want to appreciate here as well friends and family who just celebrated the PhD, still as a massive achievement, but helped by also not treating it as such at the same time. Reminding me of their own life milestones and wins/losses, such as housewarmings, birthdays, preparing for exciting trips, or also going through breakups and getting rejections (as it so happens in academia especially), the weeks post-submission with them grounded me in appreciating the everyday again, and settling back into real life. 

‘Go for long walks’, my other supervisor said. So I gave this a try, walking around town, along the river, exploring new places, sometimes joined by friends. But mostly, whilst walking, I went through my presentation script in my head or practised some answers to the question cards I had written. On the note of preparing for Viva questions, I did write my own questions on some flash cards, and it turned out to be the most helpful tool for me: just going through questions one by one, mixing them up, asking someone to pick one for me and thinking about an answer. Yes, I practised with those questions I thought would come up, not to spoil it here, but a whole set of different questions was actually asked on the day. While preparing, what I was worried about from day one was also the fear of overpreparing and getting more and more nervous just because of it. I tried instead to prepare for the Viva similarly to how I treated my Mock Viva and former Annual Progress Reviews preparation. Don’t get me wrong, I knew my thesis inside out, knew my presentation script by heart and got better day by day practising talking about my work again. However, I stopped myself from overthinking and doing too much. At some point, I simply hoped that it was good enough on the day to come. 

Overthinking and preparing are easy when, nowadays, there is so much advice, books, even journal articles and (un-)requested opinions from former PhD students out there to access online. It is hard to escape or not feel tempted to do a quick Google search ‘just to see how others have prepared for it’. Well, what you can see here is that I also found myself in my beloved procrastination bed that was just starting to feel comfortable again. Luckily, a good friend picked me up and literally made me sit in a Mock Viva with her. I was not forced to, I remember having agreed to it, saying yes and appreciating it in the moment. However, a stranger reading your thesis is one thing, but a friend, knowing you well and challenging you on shared research interests and coming up with tough questions out of curiosity and genuine interest in wanting to help and support you, …well, that’s an interesting experience in itself. But somehow it was exactly what I needed that week, and it definitely helped. There is a different level of understanding and empathy for each other, going through it question by question, making us re-live moments of her own Viva from a few months before and anticipating mine to come. 

In sum, what has helped both of us through the post-submission and pre-Viva stages, we would recommend to other PhD students too: 

• Prepare questions, write them on cards and think about answers one by one.
• Do a private Mock Viva or go through some form of Q&A with a friend. 
• Go for walks, walking helps processing and clearing up some thoughts, while practising answers. If walking is not for you, do something else that you love. 
• Re-read your thesis again. You won’t enjoy all parts, but definitely many that will turn into beautiful reminders of why you did the PhD in the first place.
• Don’t read everything there is on the internet about ‘Viva prep last-minute tips’ – each PhD journey is different.
• Before you go in, believe your supervisors saying: ‘You’re the expert, you’ve done it, no one will know it better than you know it already at this stage. You’ll be fine.’ 
• And most importantly: trust yourself and how amazing your work is. You’ve got this!

To put some concluding thoughts to this post, yes, we have both successfully passed and defended our PhDs (yay!). And what everybody did tell us before became true indeed: the Viva was challenging, and honestly, it was pretty nerve-wracking waiting for the examiners to be ready, seeing them discussing questions through the glass walls (not recommending meeting rooms with glass walls), getting into the room, presenting and then being questioned and tested, leaving the room again, waiting, being asked to step in again, taking a deep breath and hearing that we passed. 

Some drinks later… in the end, we both realised it was not about the day of the Viva but rather about celebrating the moments and milestones over the last years, that all came together on this day like puzzle pieces forming the bigger picture that we could not see before. And this is also what stays with us: the examiners’ genuine curiosity about the research, its design and implications. And their interest in our positionality, who we are as researchers and who we are behind our academic selves, something that often tends to be hidden, overlooked, and of less interest in academia. And this helped so much in experiencing the final day, the PhD Viva, overall as enjoyable, enriching and honestly just great conversation with two experts in the field. 

Really, that’s it!

We, Marly and Julia, are writing here about our individual and shared post-submission experiences through an intentionally chosen ‘I’-perspective to invite the reader to reflect on their own subjective experience of going through the PhD.

Julia Römer has recently completed her PhD research at the School of Innovation and Technology, Glasgow School of Art. Her thesis is titled ““How ‘green’ is my school?” – Co-Researching Primary School Learners’ Experiential Understanding of Sustainability Education”. Julia’s research interests centre on sustainability education and creative and design-led research methodologies with children and young people. You can find more about Julia’s work here.

Marly Muudeni Samuel completed her PhD at the School of Innovation and Technology, Glasgow School of Art. Her thesis is titled “Participatory Co-Production and Augmented Reality for Ocean Heritage: Preserving Ocean Knowledge, Culture and Relationships in Namibia”. She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Stirling. Her research investigates different relationships people have with the environment and the role of knowledge games in promoting environmental relationships and sustainability. Her research interests include digital technologies, multi-transdisciplinary research, safeguarding Indigenous knowledge and heritage, and community collaborative approaches. You can find more about Marly’s work here.