A man with a PhD :-)

I always considered the blog title "A man with a PhD - Richard Gayle's Weblog" to be quite funny. Now I am a man with a PhD. Yesterday afternoon my external examiner, Jillian MacBryde (click here for her list of publications) from Strathclyde University congratulated me on having earned my PhD after I had defended my thesis at Cranfield University. I passed with minor corrections and expect to be able to share my final document with interested readers within 6 weeks (minor corrections need to be signed off by the internal examiner, Tim Baines)

I am very grateful for this opportunity, grateful to more people and organisations than I could list here. Annette Leslie described my state after the viva in an email to my supervisor's PhD Group as "bright eyed and bushy tailed". Yes, I had to look up that phrase on urban dictionary, but I didnt find a satisfying answer there. I didnt find one via Google neither but I get the concept now...

My supervisor was Fiona Lettice, who recently moved on from Cranfield to University of East Anglia's School of Management, and my second supervisor was Mike Bourne from Cranfield School of Management. Both of them were great mentors and compagnions on this journey and their engagement and knowledge thoroughly impressed me throughout the programme.

I am a man with a PhD now and I quite like that.

Below a picture from after the viva showing my internal examiner Tim Baines and external examiner Jillian MacBryde, taken of course after the viva was over... (and yes, the white chunk of paper on the left is my thesis, the yellow stickers are post its for discussion points...)