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Year: 2021

Nathan

Like Your Viva

Daily Post

Because even on Valentines Day it might be a bit much to hope that people love their viva!

You could like your viva because…

  • …you’re almost done!
  • …you get to talk with two academics about your work!
  • …you know you’re good enough and it’s going to work out just fine!
  • …you’ve prepared and know you’re ready!

Or you could have another reason. It’s reasonable to hope and expect a candidate would like their viva. Whatever happens, tell your story afterwards. If you liked it, say why. If you didn’t, say why.

Share your experiences to help others hopefully like their vivas in the future.

Nathan

Save Points

Daily Post

Video games have been a big part of my pandemic coping strategies. Interactive stories, complex challenges, puzzle solving and sometimes great big emotional experiences to distract me from the background of life right now.

Save points have featured a lot too: either specific locations within a game where I have to pause and record my progress or a menu option that takes me out of the moment so I can make sure my journey through the game’s experience is recorded.

Save points are useful in viva prep too for keeping you on target. Rather than simply record your state for the next time, a prep save point could act as a very quick review – a growing record to look at and know that you are getting closer to being ready.

Any time that you take time to get ready, as you finish, just ask yourself:

  • How long did I invest in my future success?
  • What did I do?
  • How did it help?
  • What could I do to keep building on this progress?
  • What will I do when I next do some viva prep?

Each time you finish some prep task respond to these, quickly, a few words or sentences for each. Two minutes to capture something that helps prove to yourself that you are getting ready.

You are getting closer to that big achievement of passing your viva.

Nathan

The Unmysterious Viva

Daily Post

The viva experience might be sometimes unclear, but it’s not mysterious.

There’s a variety of experiences, but a clear range of common expectations.

There’s structure from regulations, academic practice and norms from departmental procedures.

Every viva is necessarily unique, but it’s simple enough to find a useful set of expectations to work towards.

Learn a little to take away any idea that your viva is a mysterious event in your future.

Nathan

No Peeking

Daily Post

You can’t somehow look ahead and know the outcome of your viva.

You can take a good guess that it will be a pass and minor corrections. You can’t grab hold like a birthday present and give it a squeeze – it’s a book/DVD/socks/chocolates!! – and know for sure what it will be like. You might have a sense that a chapter has a few typos that need fixing, or that a section will need rewriting in some way, but the details will be beyond your reach.

Rather than guess and wonder exactly what will happen, focus on doing what you can to be ready. Get your thesis done, prepare well, find your confidence, be ready to engage with your examiners’ questions. Leave the outcome and the corrections for later. Save your focus for what’s right in front of you.

No peeking!

Nathan

The Next Normal

Daily Post

We’ve not quite found the new form of the viva. In the UK, they’re all over video for now, but it’s too soon to say if that’s going to be normal from now on.

There’s definite benefits: potentially greater choice for examiners; more opportunity for making your own space a confidence-boosting environment for the viva; perhaps even new opportunities for participating in the viva itself that wouldn’t have been possible in a small seminar room. But reading body language and making small talk might suffer in the viva. I wonder if vivas-over-video will remain popular as people head back into the world.

I can recall telling seminar rooms not that long ago – very confidently – that any changes to the viva would come slowly. Academic culture was a ship that takes a long time to change course; the viva would continue to slowly evolve and change. I was so sure!

Wherever things go with the viva, the purpose will remain the same.

Examiners will want to explore your research contribution, be sure that you did the work and be certain that you’re a good researcher. They don’t have to do that in person though. As change comes, perhaps the viva will be broken into specific sections. Maybe formal presentations will become much more common as a start to the viva.

Our current situation is not normal, it’s different. The next normal is still coming.

It’ll take time, but it will get here. Underneath any differences though will be the same questions: What have you done and why? How did you do it? And can you show us how talented you are?

Nathan

Aware of the Outcomes

Daily Post

I don’t think I knew – at all – what the result of my viva might be.

I naively expected that I would pass, and I was right in expecting that. I suppose I expected I would have to make some corrections, which was right again – but I had no idea as to what that really meant, how much time I would be given, how that would be sorted out. I knew none of it.

I didn’t know that there were regulations about vivas. I didn’t know that there were categories of outcomes. Had I been aware of all this I think I would have been better prepared for what happened at the end of my viva. I was told that there was something still to do, told that I had three months to get it done. It wasn’t bad, but it was a surprise.

Be less clueless than me. Find out what is expected formally for different outcomes at your institution. Be certain of what’s expected for minor corrections particularly, as that is the most common outcome.

Nathan

Nerves In Perspective

Daily Post

PhD candidates are generally nervous about the viva. In my experience, most will feel a portion of nervousness at some point before they meet their examiners. Some will continue to feel it during their viva too.

I don’t know that a person can ever completely overcome a feeling of nervousness, but I’m convinced that they could learn to put them into perspective:

  • The viva is important, so it’s natural to be nervous about it.
  • You may be nervous about it, but it’s only going to be for a few hours. Then it’s done.
  • Most people pass – and pass well – so however nervous you feel, the outcome is most likely going to be good.

Nervousness isn’t always rational. You can feel nervous and be confident for success at the same time. Try to focus on what you need to do, so that you can do well.

For the viva particularly, remember that those nervous few hours come after thousands of hours of work on your part. Remember that, and those thousands of hours might help you see that those few hours in the viva are going to be fine.

Nathan

The First Step

Daily Post

Getting ready for the viva could take twenty hours of work spaced out over several weeks.

What’s the first task on your list?

  • Gathering stationery supplies?
  • Reading the first page?
  • Chatting to your supervisor?
  • Clicking for a random piece of advice from a pretty good blog about the viva?
  • Asking a friend for help?
  • Or something else?

You might have worries about the viva or preparing, but once you take your first step you’re on your way to success.

What will your first step be?

Nathan

How Will You Feel?

Daily Post

I ask “How do you feel?” a lot.

By my records I’ve asked this question in seminars and webinars at least 300 times, to over 5000 PhD candidates. It’s good to reflect on in a seminar but that’s one moment, weeks or possibly months before the viva.

I can’t ask the title of this post because it would be impossible to answer well! Who knows how you will feel on the days leading up to your viva, or in the moments before it. It’s helpful to reflect on how you might feel though, because however you feel, now or later, there is always something positive you can do to help for the viva.

  • If you felt worried: you could ask someone you trust for advice.
  • If you felt unprepared: you could make a plan and help steer yourself closer to ready.
  • If you felt great: fantastic! Now, what could you do to really hold on to that feeling?

However you feel now, there’s something you can do to help yourself. However you might feel in the time leading to the viva, there will be something you can do to help yourself. Reflect, then decide on what you’ll do to help.

Nathan

Number Posts

Daily Post

I try not to be clickbait-y in the titles that I choose for posts. Numbers are sometimes really useful to help me round up ideas, and they also help to draw attention too. It dawned on me that in and amongst the many posts I’d published that I had probably done posts “counting down” from ten to one.

I checked – I have!

Another thing about “number” posts: they’re usually pretty clear. While it won’t be enough for you to try to memorise “eight cool things” about your thesis or “ten top references” in your bibliography, giving yourself a nudge with a number could help you to look at your research differently. It might help you to summarise or capture things neatly too.

Used appropriately, numbers can stick in the mind quite well!

1 … 31 32 33 34 35 … 37