Daily viva help for PhDs
You might not have an answer for every question in your viva.
But in response you could offer an opinion or share a thought. You could ask a question for clarity or reveal how you feel about a topic. You could have a hunch or hypothesis, or you could have nothing, and say simply, “I don’t know.”
Responding to questions or comments is a fundamental part of the viva – but remember that you don’t need an answer for everything.
If you’ve nothing left when you sit down to get ready for the viva, then you’re not ready to get ready.
Take a break.
Submit, then stop.
Pause, then prep.
Relax and restore, then ready yourself. You can’t get ready for the viva if you have nothing more to give.
A few weeks or even a few days can be enough to recover from that final push to get your thesis finished and submitted. Viva preparation does not require fantastic efforts either, so if in day-to-day life, after work and other commitments you only have a little, then only give a little. You don’t need to ruin yourself to get ready.
Rest, restore and refuel first.
It’s a minute before your viva starts. You’re probably a little nervous. Ready but recognising the importance.
As you begin remember you have passed…
…and now you have one more thing to pass.
Given that you’ve passed so much already, it’s fair to assume that you’re going to pass this one too.
So go pass.
Between Christmas and New Year I shared some of my favourite posts from the blog from 2020. In case you missed them here’s a link to those posts, and a link to my favourite post from each category!
Best of Viva Survivors 2020: Viva Prep – Six Steps For Friction-free Prep does exactly what it says in the title. I explore all the different aspects of this post in detail in other posts, and they’re topics that I like to come back to again and again. I like the simplicity of this post.
Best of Viva Survivors 2020: Long Posts – Being Thankful stands out to me. Gratitude helps. It can’t always solve problems immediately, but can help frame the situation better. Viva prep and the viva can both be challenging, but being aware of what has helped you (and what could help you still) can encourage you to look again at where you are and what you have to support you.
Best of Viva Survivors 2020: Short Posts – I realised in May that I had latched on to a few new ways of expressing something about being “ready” for the viva. Better & Ready was a neat way of sharing these thoughts.
Best of Viva Survivors 2020: Surviving – for the last few years I’ve finished off my best of series with posts on confidence. Exploring confidence has helped me personally a lot over the last decade. But for 2020 it felt appropriate to reflect on surviving a little more, another topic that comes up in my work a lot. Is Survival Enough? raises the point that while survive is a good verb to have in mind for the viva, it’s not the only thing you could find through the process.
Interesting Times is an important post for me too; back in March 2019 it had to be written. At the start of that week I went from being a guy who travelled up and down the UK most weeks between different universities, to being a guy who stays in his little home office and smiles into the camera to deliver a seminar.
Going back to gratitude: I’m very thankful that I was able to keep maintaining this blog all through 2019 and keep helping where I could. Thank you for reading! And if any of these posts resonate with you, or you know someone who might benefit, do pass them on!
Following yesterday’s post, consider the environment that you’re going to work in to get ready for the viva. What can you do to make it as supportive as possible? Where will you go?
A little thought before you begin can make a great difference.
If you can manage it, a little routine could be useful for helping you to get ready for the viva. Viva prep will not be the first thing that goes in your diary or on your wall planner. You’ll have other commitments and responsibilities that have to come first. The prep needs to get done though. Think carefully:
Reflect a little and find times when you could get the work done. It doesn’t have to be every day, but having a routine could be useful to help you tune into the work that needs doing.
In some cases, you won’t be able to.
The viva is not a question and answer session or a quiz. Some questions won’t have memorisable facts that you can serve up to your examiners; instead, you will have to offer another contribution, a response – a detail, an opinion, an argument, a feeling, a hunch, a question – in order to keep the discussion moving forward.
Your response may not be the entirety of everything you want to say. It may be that you have to pause and reflect first, make notes, stand up and draw something, or ask for clarification.
You may not be able to answer a question, but after a little thought you will always be able to respond.
If the question is difficult, then you owe it to yourself to think a little more, pause a little longer, take a little more care, even ask for a little more, so that you can respond as best as you possibly can. That response could be an answer (truth, or an argument with a lot of evidence), but it could be something else that is just as much what your examiners could be looking for.
Every question, not just the difficult ones, deserves a little time, a little space, a little thought in order for you to give your best response.
I had read my thesis. I had made notes, lots of them. Read papers by my examiners. Had six or seven hour-long conversations with my supervisor in the almost-two months leading from submission to my viva. My viva was 10am on a Monday morning, and I had a weekend free and clear to rest, relax and check anything else I needed to check.
Which I did!
And then at 9:45am on Monday, with fifteen minutes to go before the start of my viva I knocked on my supervisor’s door and said, “Hi Hugh, can I just go over the definition of a genus 2 handlebody one more time? Thanks! It’s when…”
A basic definition was perhaps not the best thing to be checking just before my viva. It was a minor point, but a worry point – something I kept checking again and again because I was sure I was misremembering something, or that something fundamental wasn’t quite sticking in my mind.
What minor points concern you? Even little things can add up to a big worry or a heap of nerves. You don’t have to start your prep by tidying away small concerns, but nor is it a good idea to finish your prep with them either.
If not you, who?
Because you’re the only person who can pass your viva.
If not now, when?
Because until you’re in the viva you have time to prepare, time to get ready.
Time to remind yourself that you’re the only person who can pass your viva.
Not just the 1st of January. Not the 2nd, once you finish celebrating New Year’s Day!
Every day is a chance to look at what you do, how you do it, why you do it and think, “What else…?”
What else can you do to help build your talent?
What else can you do to steer your confidence?
What else will you need to be ready for your viva?
What else can you achieve in this new year?