What’s Your Contribution?
Be as grand as you like. The question could finish with many things: what is your contribution… …to your field? …to research? …to knowledge? …to the world? Turn it around a few times in your mind. Examine your work from...
Daily viva help for PhDs
Be as grand as you like. The question could finish with many things: what is your contribution… …to your field? …to research? …to knowledge? …to the world? Turn it around a few times in your mind. Examine your work from...
During my PhD, I used to pray for a lectern whenever I gave a talk. I could hide a bit that way. It’s not that I didn’t want to share my research: I would simply feel too nervous. Feeling nervous...
I love making bread. Nothing fancy, just a simple mix of flours, yeast, salt and water. Often a little oil. I find it’s difficult to get wrong. I start, and then a few hours later I get to find out...
I often tell people to do X, Y or Z in order to prepare for the viva, or give some idea of what to do to feel ready. I also like an idea that I first encountered via Tim Ferriss,...
Universities have regulations about thesis examination, conditions that they expect. But every viva will be different from every other. Every PhD thesis and every PhD researcher is different from every other. Your viva won’t be like mine: it’ll have the same...
Are you going to give it 110% on viva day? Push it to the limit?! Go above and beyond the call of duty?? Are you going to give it everything you’ve got??? Hmm. Do you need to? Or by that...
Have you noticed there’s not a lot of love for the PhD process? Every stage seems to have some kind of negativity attached to how it’s described: First Year Funk: realising that what you wanted to do is harder than...
What would a perfect viva look like? No hard questions? Being told you had passed at the start? Friendly examiners? A one hour time limit? Just like the perfect thesis, the perfect viva doesn’t exist. You have no way of...
It’s a little over seven years since I started to help candidates prepare for their vivas. I thought it might be something interesting when I was asked to do a Viva Survivor workshop. I was still relatively new and exploring...
I keep folders of articles and posts that I’ve found interesting in the past. Every few weeks I pick a few out at random. Either I find something useful I need to remind myself of, or I decide that I’m...