Inevitable
If you’re doing a PhD, the viva is coming. It will happen. It is all about your work, your ideas and what they all mean. The viva reveals things, to your examiners and to you. Your examiners have read your...
Daily viva help for PhDs
If you’re doing a PhD, the viva is coming. It will happen. It is all about your work, your ideas and what they all mean. The viva reveals things, to your examiners and to you. Your examiners have read your...
I listen to a couple of podcasts quite regularly – The Tim Ferriss Show and Revisionist History are both favourites of mine – and on one recently I heard someone say something that lodged in my head as being quite...
One of my heroes, Seth Godin, describes in one of his books why people struggle when they learn to juggle. Wannabe jugglers focus so much on trying to catch balls that they don’t throw them enough. They want the catch...
In preparing for the viva you get to choose what to focus on. You get to choose what to avoid. Make the choice consciously. The list of advice and practical points is long. It’s unlikely that you can do everything...
More candidates tell me they’re nervous rather than excited about their viva. Many who tell me that they’re nervous wish they could feel confident or excited about the big day. Today, for the first time, I can reveal my four...
I’ve written a fair bit about viva questions before. I’m exploring different angles on the topic at the moment for future posts and workshops. Here are eight short thoughts that might be useful: There are lots and lots of lists...
I had an idea for explaining the PhD process, a picture in my head that I described to my wife: Me: “PhD candidates are like salmon, swimming upstream to the source of ideas. It’s a difficult journey, long and tiring,...
You can’t expect your thesis to be perfect. Your examiners don’t expect it to be perfect. There might be typos or clumsy writing, something vague, but nothing too awful. But what if there’s a flaw? What if there’s something which...
How many times have you answered questions about your research? How many times have you read a paper and increased your knowledge? How often have you made a contribution to your field? How many times have you had a discussion...
You need pressure to make diamonds. It’s cheesy, but maybe you need the pressure of viva questions to find certain insights. I’ve lost track of the number of times someone has told me that they found new ideas through talking...