Ph.D. Viva/Defense Whatever You Want to Call It

Tomorrow at 1:30 GMT, I will have my Ph.D. Viva. This is it. I should pass with either major or miner revisions. I could fail, but that isn't likely. They call it a defense in the States. Tomorrow when I sit in that room, it will have been 5,559 days since my mother died. I am certain that my mother will be there when I walk across the stage at graduation in July. But today, more than any other day in the last 15 years, I wish she were here to talk to, to cheer me on, to answer my phone call.

 

My Mother in her middle 30s, just like me.