Know This
At a recent workshop I was asked, what is the most important thing I should know before my viva? Know that you are where you are supposed to be. Know this. You can be nervous about the viva, but you...
Daily viva help for PhDs
At a recent workshop I was asked, what is the most important thing I should know before my viva? Know that you are where you are supposed to be. Know this. You can be nervous about the viva, but you...
The Viva Survivors daily blog is almost a year old! Thanks to everyone who reads, subscribes, shares it and sends me questions. Saying thank you is important: when you get the chance in your thesis acknowledgements make sure you take...
How big a deal is your viva? There are tens of thousands of them every year in the UK. Maybe over a thousand in your university. Even at a department level there could be dozens. And your examiners may do...
I often advise candidates to check out their examiners’ publications before the viva. Maybe they know their work already, maybe not, but either way they can get a sense of where their thinking is at. They can wonder about what...
You can prepare for your viva like you’re getting ready to fight: it’s a desperate struggle and you have to be ready for anything! But how much time will that take? What does that say about how you feel about...
Some candidates approach preparation for questions in the viva like it’s a great big quiz. If they try to think of every question that examiners could ask and make notes, they’ll have all the answers. But whenever they have another...
I like zines! Small publications, often made with passion, often made because the creator has to make them once they’ve had the idea. I got interested through role-playing games zines. I made some in that area before I made The...
During my PhD I didn’t have to extend my algorithm to consider the HOMFLY polynomial… …but I thought it was more useful than just writing it was possible in a discussion section. I didn’t have to produce tables of plait...
Obsessed with the fine detail of your thesis? Take a step back and think about where your research fits in the field. Pondering over how your work relates to other researchers? Zero in on all of the steps that made...
A few years back I heard of universities offering first year PGRs the opportunity to sit in on vivas. They could take some of the fear out and get some real, observed expectations for their own viva. When the time...