PhDiary #9 “Breathe a sigh of sweet relief” – Handing in the PhD Thesis

Knowing when it’s time

The hardest part of handing in was knowing when it was time. I originally wanted to finish in March, however my supervisor had other ideas. Understandably, he wanted to continue to read and re-read my thesis until it was the best it possibly could be. But that meant there was no clear end in sight.

With my sister getting married at the end of April, I knew I wanted to be done by then so I could celebrate care free. With that in mind, I set a hard deadline with my supervisor and did as much editing as humanly possible in that time.

The real lesson is that no PhD thesis is perfect. While it’s great to plunge as much time as you can into edits, there has to be an end. Often it isn’t when it’s perfect but when life catches up to you, or you can’t bring yourself to read the same thing anymore.

Final sweeps

Once you’ve decided it’s time, and you’re fed up of reading your words over and over again, I recommend reading it one more time. It’s unlikely you’ll catch everything, but your examiners will pick out spelling and grammar mistakes and they will check your referencing.

In the week I submitted, I skimmed through the thesis purely for those types of errors. While I didn’t catch everything, I definitely reduced the list of corrections I received after the viva.

Both under and overwhelming

Now is the moment. The very strange moment of submission. Gone are the days of printing and binding your thesis, where you can marvel at the chunky book you wrote. Now, many universities have you submit online.

3pm on a Wednesday afternoon, I logged in, entered my details and uploaded the immense document. I clicked submit. It was done.

You can probably tell this monumental moment was somewhat ruined by the very simple process. Even sending an email requires more work. I felt blank, lost even, until a wave of guilt washed over me. Had I submitted too early? Should I have taken another month? The whole thing felt reckless. I was both overjoyed and terrified to be free. I could practically hear the questions from friends and family, ‘so what are you going to do next?’.

Breathe a sigh of sweet relief!

While the onset of practically every human emotion was unexpected, I did eventually feel relief. Ultimately, it didn’t matter how good my thesis was. Not only was it literally too late to do anything, but I knew I poured my heart and soul into that thing. What will be will be, and right now I was free to finally relax.

Don’t worry if you don’t immediately feel overjoyed like everyone will expect you to. Take your time to process. Eventually you’ll breathe that sweet sigh of relief and settle into your post submission life.