Milestone review upgrade official PhD klaxon!

Earlier today I had my second formal milestone review for my PhD and I passed.

Phew…

This means I upgrade from the probationary period to a full PhD candidate status. To get to that stage I had to submit a milestone review with a more detailed literature review and an updated position in terms of the aims, objectives, research questions and overall approach to conducting the research.

Then I had a viva today – aka my own private exam – where a panel ask questions based upon the report I’ve submitted and look to understand the proposal, test my thinking and generally probe to be sure there’s a viable PhD in there, and that it can be delivered in a viable way.

It’s interesting getting a perspective on the project from people who aren’t really involved in the project directly and are just having to make sense of things from the report itself. Reassuring that they were able to make sense of it and that their questions weren’t about things that aren’t already on my radar.

Good to get out of my own head on this project too and have the chance to explore the project with people and test my own thinking. It’s also been really helpful to act as a point at which to bring together some initial thinking that’s surfacing from the research done to date and help provide a check-in point on all of that.

Exciting times, a milestone a while in the making. I suppose in truth I trusted my supervisor’s view that I would pass, so I wasn’t worried I wouldn’t pass but then it meant that I could both approach it not feeling worried but also didn’t have quite so much of a sense of the weight of the session. Having gone through it and come out the other side with a pass it now feels like I can allow myself to have a sense of what it means and to enjoy having got to this stage. Which right now, after the viva this morning and a couple of interviews for my PhD this afternoon feels like it’s the perfect time to have a slightly space cadet but incredibly grateful sit…