The pathway I followed had one paper in each semester, each ending with a 10,000 word report, presentation and oral defence with external examiners, advisors and peers. ‘Oral Defence?’ Presentation = Power Point = black hole = end of my doctorate.  Or so I thought.

After the first sentence of my first oral defence (for defence, read inquisition), the words just vanished, the cogency of the presentation evaporated, the Ed. Doc. went down the gurglers within my mind and I went home absolutely and utterly shattered.  And then later, Advisor Two declared, “Pick one theory and only one theory” but Advisor One thankfully said, “It’s your project"  These two snippets are but a part of the story...

This paper is about how one person survived the trials and tribulations of the first two years of the Ed. Doc. process.