After submitting my thesis in January, had a few email exchanges with my supervisor and then the long period of silence, which is all too common in this long journey.
A journey that started off with an offer of a fully funded PhD degree when I was in the final year of my Master in Engineering degree in University of Nottingham.
I jumped in without hesitation, it's fully funded after all, including my living cost.
And thus began the mistake, the misery...
Five and a half years in Nottingham after the four years for my first degree, so I almost spent a decade of my life in England. Did the research, as well as wrote and submitted the thesis draft before I left England for good.
And then there was silence, for months and years, with sporadic email exchanges in between the silence bouts.
Throughout the years I eventually got the feedback I needed to modify my thesis accordingly to meet supervisor's approval. But alas too many years had passed that some requirements could no longer be met because I no longer have my prototype and the necessary research facilities to run the experiments and simulations for the additional data my supervisor requested.
So it's goodbye to the PhD degree. Life is cruel.
After all these years, getting the PhD degree is no longer the point, it's all about not wanting that period of my life, those years and hard work, to be a complete waste. I put in the time and effort, how could I just leave empty handed?
So I pleaded for a downgrade to MPhil degree, and my supervisor agreed to it. And thus we took out a few chapters from the thesis, slimmed down the content to make it appropriate for a Master of Philosophy degree.
The rest is history.
And today I received both an email from my supervisor, as well as a postal mail sent early of this month, saying the examiners have agreed that I be awarded the MPhil degree.
Really, finally, at long last.
There are also copies of the examiners' reports in the postal mail. The internal examiner had nothing bad in her report, while the external examiner had some nitpickings that pricked the perfectionist within me. But since both of them recommended the award of MPhil without conditions, I am going to live with my thesis not being perfect but not needing any change.
Just gimme the degree already! I don't care about other stuff anymore.
As a last step, I have to upload an electronic version of my thesis, but I got a hiccup since I have forgotten my university login and password, so I gotta resolve that before I am truly done.
If all goes smoothly, then I should be able to graduate by the end of the year.
I don't get to say "trust me, I am a doctor", but at least I have two Master degrees.
The long journey: | 1 | | 2 |
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