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Month: April 2019

Nathan

Small Things Add Up

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There are big tasks involved in finishing a thesis and preparing for the viva. Sometimes, though, you can make a difference by thinking as small as “How could I make this one percent better?”

Think small!

  • What small things could you do to boost your confidence?
  • What tiny notes could you add to your thesis?
  • How could you help your prep in five minutes or less?
  • What’s the shortest way you can usefully summarise an aspect of your research?

You need to think big to get a PhD done. As your viva gets closer there’s a place for thinking small too.

Nathan

Enough Is Enough

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What if I hadn’t done enough? What if I needed more results? What if my examiners didn’t see what I saw in my work?

After years of work and months of writing up, as my page count crept towards 200, I started to think that maybe I needed more. A good friend showed me his thesis and it was like a tombstone. I worried until he showed me that the second half of his thesis was appendices of data. Then I worried when he told me that a colleague down the hall had passed her viva with a thesis that was less than sixty pages.

Oh no. What if my writing style is just really waffly and overlong? What if, like my italicised questions, they just go on and on and on and on…

My doubts faded. Of course, it dawned on me, that every thesis is different, naturally. It’s hard to quantify “significant” in the face of the variety of research that people do. There may be broad expectations in your discipline, in terms of style and structure and so on, and it’s worth learning as much as you can about those.

How do you know though? How do you know – or maybe a better word is believe – when you’ve done enough work? When you have enough results? How do you believe?

You have to look at it all. You have to get a sense both from others and yourself that the work you have done matters. You have to reflect on the fact that your thesis may be big or small, have five chapters or nine, and it is just different from everyone elses…

…and like everyone else who has come before, the reason you are here and you are going to pass your viva is because you can’t just be lucky. You can’t just show up and get the right answers or right ideas blindly. You have to be good. You have to do good work. And you have to have done that for a long time.

You have to have enough to be submitting.

You have to have enough to be preparing for the viva.

And that’s what can give you enough confidence that your work matters, you are good, and you will pass.

Enough is enough.

Nathan

Biased

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How do you know your approach is a good one?

Is there only one way of interpreting your results?

Through years of study and focus, have you found one way of doing something, and now you only see that way of doing it?

Check your biases before the viva. Ask for your supervisor’s perspective. Ask if there were things that you discarded or which might be valuable. What have you ignored? What have you put to one side as you narrowed your focus?

You’re not looking for problems for the sake of it. You’re building certainty in the way you’ve done things, by being sure that you’ve not done something one way simply because you’re used to thinking of it that way.

Nathan

Don’t Go It Alone

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You’re the only person who can answer your examiners’ questions in the viva. That’s true in the sense that it’s your viva but also in the sense that you might be the only person who could answer their questions. As with the rest of your PhD, it’s up to you alone to do the work, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get help from others.

Tell colleagues you need them to listen, or you need to know about their viva, or that you want to ask a few questions about a topic they’re fluent in.

Tell your supervisor how they could continue to support you, or that you would like a mock, or that you want more feedback.

Tell your friends and family what the viva is, if they don’t know, and how they can help you.

For all of these groups, make it clear what you need and they’ll be more likely to help you get that. That starts with you being clear about what you need, and maybe why you need it.

Need help? Just ask.

Nathan

Ask For Their Opinion

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Your examiners’ job is to examine you. (well, of course!)

But to do that they have to be experienced, they have to read your thesis carefully and they have to think a lot. While most of the questions in the viva will be aimed towards you, there’s no rule that says you can’t ask questions too.

So ask what they think. Ask what they would do next. Ask about publications and funding and monographs and anything else that you really want to talk about and get help with.

The first step is to think about what questions you would like to ask if you had the chance. Prioritise them and write them down on an index card for the viva.

The prompt can prompt you. (well, of course!)

It’s useful just in case you get so involved in answering the examiners’ questions in the viva that you forget there were things you wanted to ask too.

Nathan

The Weakest Parts

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I think everyone, if they look, will find things in their thesis that they think are weak.

When they find them, they’ll feel bad and start to worry.

If this is you, you’ve found something and are worried, please reflect on the following three points:

  • First, it’s probably not as bad as you think. In wanting to succeed in your PhD, and wanting your thesis to be the best it can be, you’ve aimed for perfection and missed. Perfect is impossible.
  • Second, something that’s “weak” doesn’t just happen. There are reasons. List them, then interrogate them. Why did it turn out this way? What’s the cause? What could you do about it if you had more time/resources/interest and so on?
  • Third, weak is relative. If your thesis was all weak, you wouldn’t have made it to submission. You see something missing because you see what’s around it. You see something as weak because of strengths of your research.

Don’t ignore the weakest parts of your work, but try not to make them the biggest focus of your viva preparations either.

Nathan

Asking The Literature

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When the viva is coming up you’ll want to be sure of your methods.

Can you defend them? How did you arrive at them? Were they the only way to tackle the problem?

You’ll want to get your head clear on your conclusions too.

What are they? What do they mean? Why do they matter?

Maybe you’ll want to spend some time reflecting on what else you or someone could do with your thesis as inspiration.

How could you follow up this work? Who do you hope will be influenced? What’s your dream for how someone would take this forward?

These are all good questions that focus on your research – but spare a few questions for your literature review and bibliography. Your work doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it didn’t appear from nowhere. What were the most helpful references that influenced your methods? How did your reading support your conclusions? What does the literature tell you about the way your discipline is evolving?

Changing your perspective is useful. Different questions and perspectives can help prompt different reflections. You can probably find something interesting and valuable by thinking about where your work has come from.

Take some time before the viva to reflect on the literature that helped you complete your thesis.

Nathan

Formally Informal…

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…or Informally Formal?

How do we classify the viva?

  • Are there regulations that spell out that the viva is relaxed and has a format which allows for variation?
  • Or is there an understanding among everyone involved that this is serious, but that the rules are agreed on by the “community” rather than someone at the top?

Which is it? Could it be both? Or neither? Does it matter?

I think what matters is that candidates check the regulations, find out about experiences and expectations, then think about what they need to do to meet them. The classification for how formal the viva is or isn’t is just one more piece of baggage, that doesn’t help unless we know what’s really involved.

Nathan

Mocks Aren’t Magic

Daily Post

A mock viva is not a silver bullet that will solve all of your nervous feelings about the viva.

What are you looking for from your viva preparations?

  • Confidence?
  • A better picture of how you see your work?
  • A clearer understanding of what the viva is like?
  • Opportunities to practise?
  • Opportunities to think and get your head straight?
  • A chance to check your own talents?

If you know what you’re looking for, you can think about how you might find it. And while it’s not a magic solution that solves everything, when you think about what it can do, a mock viva could help with all of the above.

A mock viva is not a silver bullet, but maybe it’s good enough that we can think of it as a bronze arrow?

Nathan

Scoring The Viva

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Introduction: The Place Where The Post Starts

Today’s post is a little different. I’m often asked about the criteria for the viva. What do examiners look for? How are candidates assessed? These are good questions and I’ve decided that today, April 1st 2019, I’ll share details of the assessment. Academics do not want these to be widely known, but I think it’s important that PhD candidates are not fooled by rumours!

Score 100 Or More: The Goal Of The Viva

In the viva you’re trying to get a score over 100. Your score starts at 100, but your participation in the viva can raise or lower this score.

Your score increases by 1 for every question you’re asked and for every minute you spend answering that question.

Points are deducted for overly long hesitations on a sliding scale (1 point for five seconds, 2 points for 10-20 seconds, 5 points for 20+ seconds).

Points are deducted at the examiners’ discretion for repetition, stalling and grandstanding.

10 points are usually deducted for errors, lies and instances of plagiarism, unless they’re really well done, in which case bonus points could be added (depending on whether your university’s name is “University of X” or “X University”).

Questions, Answers And Points: What You Need To Know

Questions must be from the list of pre-approved questions, unless the examiners receive special dispensation from the Vice Chancellor.

If a question is not from the pre-approved list the candidate will receive a bonus point to their score (as there was no way they could prepare an answer for it in advance).

17 points are deducted for every “I don’t know” unless the candidate can justify why they don’t know, in which case 7 points will be added to the total.

Addendum: The Other Things You Need To Know

Bonus points can be awarded for answering in rhyme.

Every five minutes after the first 90 will see a decrease in score by two points, unless one of the examiners has a palindromic family name.

Otherwise, vivas longer than two hours will need to be rescored under the Alternative Viva Scoring Method (Lipra and Loof, 2019).

…actually, this method is all quite complicated…

If you really want to know how vivas are assessed at your institution, it’s probably better that you check the regulations. Chat with your supervisor or other academics from your department or faculty. Explore viva experiences with graduates from your department.

Your viva will be unique, but if you explore the likely scenarios you won’t be fooled.

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