smarty pants

My favourite congratulatory card - received from my Boetie. I'm thinking I should wear the badge to work!

happiness in bitter sweetness

I feel a deep regret at not having written this post a week ago, for now all the happiness and elation I felt last week at having finally reached the end of that rocky journey, has dissipated. I passed my PhD with minor corrections after an intense viva experience that I don't think I could have prepared for in a 100 years. I still need to tell that story but it won't be right now.

Tonight sitting here in my warm lounge working on eliminating all the typos in the thesis and fretting at the thought of having to reformat the page numbering and once again do all the Image and Figure cross-referencing - I've been disturbingly reminded how uncertain the PhD journey, and in particular how fragile the supervisory relationship, can be. It does feel right to be waxing lyrically about my achievement while a friend of mine is battling some of the same demons I did just a few months ago. Bitter, sweet; always bitter, sweet.

on my way to the UK

Indeed the time has arrived and by 10pm tonight I will be on a plane heading to the UK to attend my viva. The final little piece to the puzzle that soon will be 'my PhD'. So much has been happening in my personal life these past few weeks, that in certain ways the viva and its preparations have had to take a back seat. And now as I'm always fond of saying - the process is just carrying me on. A sense that it's all outside of my control and all I can do is 'go with the flow' as my Mom is fond of saying. But I have been practicing and thanks to some coaching from a colleague and long lost friend MSJ, I feel ok about what I might encounter next Wednesday. I'll have some time over the next few days to put the finishing touches to my notes and rehearse some of the more standard responses to standard-type questions. But I also feel very supported. I've received well wishes and sweet, kind thoughts from so many people and my thinking is, with all this positive energy around me, a positive result is inevitable. I'm open, realistic but very aware of the work I've put in and I don't have to guess that the thesis is of passable quality. And all I want is to pass.

So here goes - and when I get back to Cape Town I'll have achieved this 'thing' and be recognised by a little precursor to my name (I can't get to the correct naming convention) that can mean so many things to different people. I'll have to work out what it means to me. But that's a story for another day and another blog post. Besides thinking about the moments immediately after the viva I'm also thinking about having some beach sand between my toes this Christmas, without any guilt associated with having chosen the beach instead of working on the PhD.