◆ Danger signs to look out for occur when an examiner is
unusually insistent on certain points, returning to them
repeatedly. She may show evident scepticism about your
responses, and perhaps even follow up her initial points in
ways that strengthen her original criticism and seem to
enlarge the gulf between your two positions. Here you may
have to acknowledge the force of a repeated criticism, but
you should still try to pare down the scope of the changes
the examiners are set on demanding. If both examiners join
in voicing criticisms, be especially careful to acknowledge
the importance of what they are saying and to give a flexible
response to the points made.
Your supervisor can be an important help to you in prepar-
ing an effective defence in depth. Nowadays it is worth asking
them to phone or e-mail the examiners informally a few days
before the oral exam, in order to sound them out on any major
issues which they have. If your supervisor calls too early the
chances are the examiners may not have read the thesis yet. But
equally, ringing the night before the exam is not much help,
because then you have too little time to think through or
research a response. Some very traditional examiners still
believe that a doctoral candidate should enter their oral exam
completely ‘cold’, and should then have to respond to whatever
issues get thrown at them, ‘thinking on your feet’. However,
most modern examiners can see the value of alerting doctoral
candidates to any main problems or points of concern they
have, so that you can anticipate a rough agenda for the oral
exam and think through some considered responses to the key
issues. Some very conscientious examiners may even release to
your supervisor (never to you directly) a copy of their prelimi-
nary report on the thesis, to give you time to prepare a fully-
fledged ‘defence’ case. But this is still a very rare occurrence.
Once your supervisor has some intelligence about the examin-
ers’ reactions, you should meet with her to discuss what the
possible problems are and how they can best be handled. Again
this is most useful a day or so before the oral exam rather than
on the morning itself.
After an oral exam is over and things have gone well, as they
normally do, most examiners will congratulate you immediately
224 ◆AUTHORING A PHD