Daily viva help for PhDs
Typos are far less important than the contribution you’ve made in your thesis. Sharing what makes your work valuable is worth more of your time than trying to remember every last reference and detail. Talking about your research helps you a lot more than only thinking about it.
Focus your prep on what matters most.
Feeling nervous means you recognise that something is important. Humans feel nervous about all sorts of things, from weddings to wars, because they recognise that what is happening matters. They might be deeply involved or a bystander: if the outcome is important and they’re paying any attention then they might feel nervous.
Your viva is important. You, of course, are deeply involved. The outcome matters. Of course you might feel nervous, and if you do there is nothing wrong.
If you feel uncomfortable as a result then that’s not great, but that’s not the end of the story. You can talk to others to get help and put your feelings in perspective. You can reflect and help yourself to get things sorted out. You can work to build your confidence.
It’s not wrong to be nervous, but it might not be comfortable. If feeling nervous isn’t helping you then consider what else you can do to change how you feel.
As a mathematician I remember the thrill of the first time I encountered the ideas of group theory.
Without getting too technical, let’s consider one of the most simple ideas: imagine if it mattered which way around you added things up in a sum. Two plus three is five, but what if three plus two was something else? What would that mean? We can get really abstract with group theory. There are all sorts of weird and wonderful things you can do but that core concept is really important: in group theory it matters what order things are done.
The same is true in the real world too. If your socks are big enough you perhaps could put them over your shoes rather than the other way around. Your feet would be covered by the same two layers but definitely not in the same way. When cooking, sometimes it matters what order you add ingredients to a pan – and when!
When I write or talk about viva prep I often try to explain that viva prep can be broken down into lots of discrete tasks. These all add up to someone being ready, but of course it does matter what order these are done in. It’s not a good idea to have a mock viva before you’ve read your thesis or checked some papers. It helps to find out more of what to expect before you even start to get ready. It’s probably a good idea to look into your examiners’ publications before you ask your supervisor about them.
With some tasks it matters less, but still consider in advance how and when you do things, and in what order. Viva prep really can be divided into lots of smaller tasks. Taking your time to complete these can lead to you being ready. It all adds up – but it does matter what order you work on your viva preparation.
Over the last two years of your PhD journey I can imagine that there’s a lot that hasn’t gone according to plan.
That’s always the way with a PhD. You prepare and you think and you plan and then you work. As you work things change, for one reason or another – sometimes even in positive ways – but never quite according to plan.
But in these last two years things might not have gone to plan for some fairly big, world-changing reasons. Your research and the course of your PhD might have shifted a lot because of the pandemic. Access to supervisors, materials, resources and even your department might have been restricted. Day-to-day life might, at times, have been disrupted to the point where you just had to stop your research or change course completely.
While life continues to move ever on, and hopefully in a positive direction, the shadow of the last two years might fall over your thesis and your viva. Missed opportunities. Projects halted. Plans changed. Now you have to present your thesis and defend it.
If at times this worries you then remember: your examiners lived through this time too. They know what has happened. They know what an impact it could have on your work. They will understand.
As you prepare, reflect on the changes to your plans. How have your plans changed? What would you have hoped for from your original plans? What do the changes really mean for your thesis?
Importantly, do what you can to remind yourself that despite all of the changes and problems you still did the work. You have still done something that matters. It’s different to what you had planned but it’s still enough.
You can feel happy about your viva or sad.
You might feel ready to get started or nervous about what your examiners might ask.
You might feel certain of what you’ve done or unsure about work from several years ago.
There’s many things you might feel about your viva. How you feel could change with each day. The viva isn’t the most important thing you will ever do but it does matter.
As you get closer to your viva, if you find yourself feeling a strong emotion – good or bad – take a moment to ask yourself why. Take a moment to reflect on what it means. Take a moment to think about what you could do as a result.
Your feelings about the viva aren’t static, but you can’t simply change them. You can steer how you feel though.
How do you feel? What do you need to do?
What could your viva be like? It could be lots of things!
It could be four hours long but feel like it’s over in half that, like mine felt to me. It could begin with a chance for you to summarise what you’ve done or with an open question from one of your examiners. It could be that you are sat around a seminar room table with your examiners or that you’re talking to each other over video and at a great distance.
There’s a lot of variety to the viva. When you account for all of the weird one-in-a-million cases, like someone (me) standing for their four hour viva, the chief expectation for vivas is that they are good.
Expect your viva to be good. Expect your thesis to be well-received. Expect your examiners to be good and prepared. Expect that you’ll receive good questions.
Expect yourself to be good enough.
We have a fireplace in our living room that looks like a coal fire. It’s not. It’s a gas fire.
It’s not connected up. The previous owners of the house had it disconnected and we’ve never needed it. We use the mantlepiece to stand pictures and ornaments.
In front of our not-fireplace we have a shiny metal stand with a set of fireplace tools. Tongs for moving coal, a brush and shovel for sweeping ash, a poker to stoke the coal fire.
Again, the coal fire is fake, the fireplace doesn’t work and we have a set of tools just to one side that we never use. We don’t need any of it! And yet we keep it all the same.
All of which is a long way to get to ask you: what are you holding on to that you don’t need any more?
Maybe you’ve submitted your thesis and have been holding on to an idea that you didn’t quite finish exploring.
Perhaps you’re a little stuck in your prep focussing on parts of your work that just aren’t important.
Or it could be that you’re holding on to an idea of who you are, what you can or can’t do, and that idea isn’t helping you any more.
It might be hard to let go sometimes. But if you consider what you’re holding on to, even if you can’t get rid of it completely, perhaps you can reflect and see what will help you more.
My daughter loves reading but hates tidying.
Consequently our living room builds up towers of books and ad hoc bookcases that lean against table ends. About once a fortnight something collapses, usually when just one more book has been added to an arrangement. Just one more book was just enough for the whole thing to give way.
As parents we encourage simplicity, putting things away, keeping what you need, tidying up what she’s finished with. She’s eight. She’ll get there.
(I hope!)
Viva prep isn’t that different, or at least how I’ve seen a lot of good candidates approach the work. They see “Just so much to do!” and think “How will I stack that up with what I already need to do?!”
It’s really not that much work. Starting with something simple helps.
Start by thinking about what you need to do to get ready. Start by listening to friends and colleagues about what they did. Start by making a little plan. Start by realising that you don’t have to stack all the work up: if you think ahead you can take your time. You can do the work in a way that works for you.
Then neither your viva prep nor your life will come crashing down around you.
There’s a difference between the thoughts you want from your supervisors before and after submission.
While finishing your thesis there are all sorts of things you might want them to consider. Does it read well? Is this right? Does it communicate what I want it to? Can you spot any typos? You want their thoughts on these and other questions because you want your thesis to be as good as possible. It can’t be perfect, but you want it to be good enough.
Your supervisors’ feedback can be a valuable part of the work that you need to do.
After submission, you still need thoughts from your supervisors but the need is different. You don’t need more ideas or suggestions on how to make your thesis better. Instead you want an outsider perspective. Your methods are sound, but what other approaches are there? Your conclusions are valid, but how else might someone look at what you’ve done? Your work is good, but what other good work could someone do in this area?
You’re not looking for more feedback. You’re looking for a different perspective. Not necessarily your examiners’ perspective, but something different to get you thinking. Listening to different perspectives as part of your prep – and responding to them – can be useful practice for the viva.
What’s the final thing you need to do before submission?
What’s the final piece of information about your examiners that will help you feel better about them?
What’s the final thing you need to know about the viva?
What’s the final question you’ll have for your supervisor?
What’s the final task you’ll do as you prepare for your viva?
What’s the final thing you’ll do on the day to help you feel ready?
Getting started isn’t necessarily always easy, but sometimes it’s as simple as doing something. Finishing isn’t necessarily always hard, but sometimes it helps to know the final thing you might cross off your list.