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Month: April 2018

Nathan

A Lack of Confidence

Daily Post

I often write about looking for ways to boost or find confidence. I’m not sure I’ve wondered too much about why someone might have a lack of confidence on the blog, except for mentioning surface level things like “what if my mind goes blank?”

For a long time before, during and after my PhD I would be hyper-nervous on any occasion I would have to speak in public. Eventually that went away, through a lot of practice. But at the root was a worry that people would judge me somehow, not like me or what I had to say.

Where did that come from?

In my dim and distant memory I remember being in a play as a teenager, to an audience of mostly teenagers, and no-one liking it. A really different kind of situation to the situations in my PhD and afterwards. Somehow different anxieties had tied together over the years.

It’s freeing to remember it now. I’m older, more rational, and can look on it differently: I can think about what it means, what I can do about it. I still get nervous, like anyone does, but thinking about where those worries came from has helped me to do something about them.

If you feel nervous or anxious about any aspect of the viva, then don’t look first for things to boost your confidence. Search instead for what might be at the root. What is causing you to doubt? What is holding you back? What does it mean?

What are you going to do?

Nathan

Butterfly Wings

Daily Post

Look back over your PhD. It may seem like a straight-line journey has brought you to the finish line. But that’s only one path. There may be lots of ways you could have gone, and lots of times things might not have worked out. What would you have done then?

It can be fruitful to explore this area by using questions. Some of these kinds of questions line up neatly with general areas your examiners might want to explore; others simply lead you to reflect on what you’ve done:

  • How else could you have started your project?
  • How could you have used different methods in your research?
  • How could you have made use of more resources?
  • How would you have managed with fewer resources?
  • How would you have coped if you’d not got the results you’d needed?
  • How else could someone interpret your results?
  • How would you do things differently knowing what you know now?

These kinds of questions help to explore your contribution and how you got it. They also help to strengthen your competence as a researcher.

Butterfly wings flap and the world changes. What then? How else could you have got through your PhD?

Nathan

One Year Later

Daily Post

It’s a year since I started the daily blog. There’s times when it feels like I’m not doing all that much, but when I pause – like today – and look back I can see how much I’ve done. In one year I’ve written over 360 posts, released several free resources, produced several blog book compilations and delivered Viva Survivor workshops to over 500 PhD candidates around the UK. All in all, I’m quite proud of how far the blog has come in one year and what I’ve done to help people get ready for their vivas.

It’s important to pause whenever you can doing a PhD or any big project really: pause and think about what you’ve accomplished. Day-by-day it’s hard to see progress, but taking a pause every now and then can really help. Look back over your PhD. It’s no accident that you’re doing it. If your viva is coming up soon you’re in the best possible place you can be to meet the challenge. Day-by-day you might have your doubts but look back over a year and think about everything you’ve accomplished. Everything you didn’t have one year ago. Everything you’ve built up and created.

Draw on that motivation and don’t stop.

Nathan

A Close Comparison

Daily Post

I think the TV show Inside The Actors Studio is a pretty similar format to the viva. An experienced and interested host asks questions. Their interviewee has done a lot of hard work over a long period of time. Questions can be deep; few can be answered with soundbites. There’s time to think and offer thoughts. The purpose of the discussion is to illuminate and reveal. While there are many questions that can’t be anticipated, there are some which the guest could prepare for, in the form of host James Lipton’s “Pivot Questionnaire”.

Of course, the viva in the UK is unlike Inside the Actors Studio in many, many ways: it’s not televised or before a large audience; you have more than one examiner; it’s typically about a smaller body of work and, most obviously, it’s about research and not the path of an acting career.

But given that there are so many bad, untrue, unhelpful stories and formats that people compare the viva to, isn’t time that we had one that was positive? The comparisons in the earlier paragraph are fairly accurate. In your viva your examiners are interested, you know a lot of what will be talked about even if you don’t know the questions exactly, and the format is something you can know about in advance.

The more good stories and useful comparisons we can share about the viva, the more we’ll change the collective picture for it for the better.

Nathan

VIVA and the Viva

Daily Post

I’ve shared a few acronyms in posts over the last year but today’s tool is different because I invented it!

VIVA is very useful to help with exploring your thesis before the viva; it’s a directed thinking tool in the same way that SWOT is used to analyse a situation. VIVA can be used simply. Take a sheet of paper for a chapter in your thesis and divide it into four. Then use a different word in each section to direct your attention as you make notes about the chapter:

  • Valuable (to others): what would someone else find valuable in this chapter?
  • Interesting (to you): what interests you about the work?
  • Vague: what doesn’t seem clear when you read it?
  • Ask: what questions would you like to ask your examiners if you had the opportunity?

This can help to draw out key points for your thesis. If you do this kind of analysis for each chapter then you build a really interesting summary. From considering what’s Valuable you unpick the contribution that you’ve made in your thesis, and by thinking about what is Interesting you rediscover your motivations. If you look for what’s Vague then you find what you need to strengthen ahead of discussion in the viva, and if you consider what questions to Ask you think ahead about the way the conversation might unfold.

I came up with VIVA about four years ago and it’s become one of the most useful ideas I’ve shared in my workshops. I’m surprised in looking back over this first year of the blog that I’ve not shared it here before! I hope you find it helpful ahead of your viva, and find some interesting ideas when you analyse your thesis.

In short: use VIVA to help with the viva!

Nathan

Phone A Friend

Daily Post

I used to love the game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? The “phone a friend” idea fascinated me. Who were these people? How were they confident Jim would know about Oscar winners? What would they do if Janet couldn’t help them figure out 18th century philosophers? That’s a lot of pressure!

You can’t phone a friend in the viva. It’s all up to you. You can’t ask the audience either or bring the options for answers down to a 50:50 choice…

…because the viva’s not a game show of course! It’s not all about factual recall or tiny closed questions that you can know or not. The viva is discussion, opinions, ideas and arguments.

And there’s just no place for your friends to help you in the viva.

It’s completely different before then. Phone your friends. Make plans with them. There’ll be lots of ways they can support you.

And if you have a friend with a viva coming up, see if they need some help. See what you can offer.

Nathan

Unstuck Thoughts

Daily Post

I’ve been using questions and prompts to unstick my thinking a lot lately, like the question I mentioned in the recent Easy Viva Prep? post. I have a lot of projects and ideas I’m developing, and all have challenges or problems with non-obvious solutions. It’s hard to see something new sometimes, when you’re so used to looking at it in a certain way.

The same goes for a long research project, like a PhD. Here are seven prompts to help you explore your research ahead of the viva. Use these to start some positive unpicking through free-writing or reflection:

  1. The most simple way to explain my field to a lay-person is to say…
  2. The most influential paper I’ve read during my PhD is…
  3. The most difficult conclusion I reached in my research is…
  4. The best thing about my thesis is…
  5. The hardest thing I did during my PhD was…
  6. The best feedback I got was when…
  7. The best way to explain my contribution is…

Dig deeper with any of these prompts by asking yourself “Why?” after you answer. See what thoughts you can shake loose.

Nathan

Dun-Dun-DUN!!!

Daily Post

Do we need to talk again about the negative things that people say, think and feel about the viva? Particularly on Friday 13th?

Let’s just say this: if you ask around, if you listen to what people tell you – about their experiences, about what the regulations say, about the expectations that everyone involved really has – you’ll find the viva isn’t something to be feared. It’s not “dun dun dun!”

More like “done-done-DONE!”

Nathan

Persist

Daily Post

I wonder if the key common attribute for researchers is persistence. Not smarts or know-how, not project management skills or effective presentations. Persistence. If you don’t keep going when things are tough, if you don’t keep going when you reach a gap and need to learn (or jump!) then you’re stuck.

I’ve not met a researcher or graduate in the last decade who hasn’t had a problem of one sort or another during their PhD. Some of them severe. Yet they persisted. Kept going until the answer was found. Kept going until they saw a way forward. Kept going until they knew more or could do more.

The viva is the final bit of persistence. Continue to know you’ve done good work. Continue to remember you must be talented. Continue to believe you have all the skills and talents you need to meet the challenges of the viva.

Don’t stop now.

Nathan

Why You Don’t Know

Daily Post

You’re not getting the context.

You’ve not considered the question before.

You mis-heard the examiner.

You don’t know a key piece of information.

You’ve gone blank.

You got distracted by a sudden thought or idea.

You’re just not making a connection.

It’s only been two seconds since the question was asked and your brain hasn’t leapt to a response yet.

Going blank or not knowing what to say in the viva is among the top fears of PhD candidates. None of the above are reasons for failure. None of the above are insurmountable, although if they occur in combination they can seem very scary. Nearly all of them are situations that can be improved by asking questions – either of yourself or your examiners. That extra breath, that extra pause, that extra idea, whatever it is, can be useful to shake some ideas loose.

Not knowing something is not the end of the viva. Pause, think, ask questions and work yourself away from “I don’t know…”

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