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Month: February 2023

Nathan

Putting In The Hours

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Five years ago, on what would have been my dad’s 70th birthday I published The Knack. It was a personal piece of writing for this blog, but also one with a point:

…your PhD is hard, but there are aspects of it you make seem effortless to others. That’s not to say it’s not still hard to you, but you can do it. You’re practised, you’re experienced. At the viva you can answer a question and engage with a discussion nearly every time because you’ve done so much during your PhD.

After all this time you have the knack.

The knack being know-how, a skillset, the knowledge, the means to just do something. It’s a shorthand for saying “you can just do it.”

 

Five years on, and today would have been my dad’s 75th birthday.

As I wrote in The Knack, for part of my childhood my dad worked as a market trader. In school holidays I would go to help and think it was a great adventure. Waking in the dark, flasks of tea, being given “grown-up jobs” of sorting things on the stall, selling things to customers, and joking with other stallholders and my dad. There was a lot of fun there.

And a lot of work. A lot of work. I remember my dad emphasising that. He wanted me to appreciate the amount of work that goes into something: the setup, the effort, the attention to detail, how you tell others and how you keep focussed.

This has some value for thinking about your viva. Remember all of the work you have put into your PhD by submission and viva prep time. It’s easy to simply acknowledge it as thousands of hours, but also remember what those hours were spent doing.

Learning, growing, discovering, writing, sharing and making something.

By the time you have your viva you have the knack for being a good researcher, but don’t forget how you got to where you are. What you did, what you achieved – and who helped you along the way.

Nathan

Going Back

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What would you change about your viva prep if you could go back and do it over?

I was asked this at a recent webinar. I knew immediately what I would change: I would have a mock viva. I definitely spent way more time on getting ready for my viva than any typical postgraduate researcher would need, but the one thing I didn’t do was rehearse.

For five or six weeks I read my thesis, made notes on pages and read my examiners’ work. I checked several papers I’d forgotten and had a weekly meeting with my supervisor where we talked about a thesis chapter. My examiners asked me to prepare slides to give a presentation for the start of my viva.

And while all of this helped, none of it prepared me directly for the simple thing I would spend my time doing in the viva: responding to questions and being part of a discussion.

So what would I do differently? Rehearse. I recommend every candidate do this too!

Nathan

Untangling

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My PhD research was about something called knot theory. The basic question in this topic can be explained, essentially, as “if you loop up a piece of elasticated string and glue the ends together, can you tell if it’s fundamentally the same or different from one that I make?”

It’s not hard to visualise, I think, but wow is it hard to actually get answers!

You need 1-variable polynomials of unoriented knots and 2-variable polynomials of oriented links. You need about 150 years of theory and new people all the time researching niche cases. You need invariants, polynomials, equations and Reidemeister moves. You could use arc invariants, stacked k-tangles and skein relations. You need to know your homology from your homotopy and you need to know what, when and why you use all these things.

Sorry. You don’t need to know all this. I did!

 

It was a lot to keep straight at times. And not all of it was directly relevant to my research, my thesis or my viva. As I was writing my thesis and then preparing for my viva, it helped me to untangle all of these terms and be sure of what they meant, what I needed them for and – in some cases – what I didn’t need.

You don’t need to know all of my stuff. You need to know your stuff for your viva. So take some time to think through what you need to be clear about. What do you need to check? What basics do you need to go over one more time? And what can you file away as probably important?

You need to know your stuff. So make sure you do.

Nathan

Opinions

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The viva is a discussion. It’s not a Q&A. It’s not an interview. It’s not supposed to be combative or about proving who is right or wrong.

Remember that your examiners are allowed to have different opinions to you. They may not agree with a conclusion. They may think that X needs more Y to account for Z.

And that means that you may have different opinions to your examiners. Different opinions don’t mean that someone is wrong. It might mean that – or it could mean that someone needs to think more, explain more, share something else or do something else.

If your examiners ask for a change or strongly suggest something then ask why. Explore more and dig deeper. And do your best, not to prove them wrong, but to engage as best as you can with what they are offering to the discussion.

Nathan

Viva Varieties

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When you hear lots of different stories about the viva it’s natural to group them together.

Short vivas. Long vivas.

Tough vivas. Easy vivas.

A presentation to start or an opening question to get things going.

Lots of questions. Hardly any.

Lots of corrections. No corrections.

Two examiners, a chair, a supervisor, a third examiner.

Expected questions and unexpected remarks.

Previously found typos and unknown errors.

And there’s more. There’s a huge range of viva experiences. Some are much more common than others. Many aspects of what “variety” your viva will be won’t be clear until you have yours.

You can’t prepare for everything, but you can be prepared. You can know the goals and expectations of your examiners, you can know what you need to demonstrate in your viva and then rise to meet that.

Long or short, easy or tough, whoever is in attendance, you can succeed.

Nathan

Ask For A Break

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The viva is not a test of endurance, a space where you have to simply work through everything until it is done.

You can take a break. You could be offered a break after an hour or two. You could need one and ask. You can ask for a comfort break, a medically-related break, a break to think or check something in your thesis. You can have a break to compose yourself.

There are many reasons to take a break in the viva and no wrong times to ask for one, if you need one.

Nathan

Making It Look Easy

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Have you ever watched someone do something amazing AND make it look easy at the same time? How do they do it?

A comedian doesn’t make a whole theatre laugh at the same time because they have a magical ability that no-one else can have. They may have a talent or skillset – but they have deep practice as well.

A chef demonstrating how to make a superb meal can do so with ease because of years of work, repetition, knowledge and understanding.

A good speaker or presenter at the front of a room can stay on track for thirty minutes, engage an audience and help them to learn or think because of the many hours they did before they got to the room.

If you ever doubt the value of what you’ve done before your viva – “it can’t be that good because now it seems easy!” – remember that it only seems easy thanks to all of your hard work.

How did you do it? Talent, work and time.

Nathan

All Your Way?

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It’s not in the nature and setup of the viva that things will simply go exactly how you want. There is so much about the viva that is beyond your control:

  • You don’t choose your examiners. You can make suggestions, but you might not get who you really want.
  • You don’t know what the questions will be in advance.
  • You can hope, but not know what your examiners will think about your thesis and research.
  • You can learn about the viva’s general expectations, but there’s no way of knowing until you’re in there how close your viva will skew towards the general experience.

All of which is to say, you can write well, prepare well and do well, but not know what will happen or what the outcome will be until it arrives.

And yet the majority of candidates pass – and pass with minor corrections. A viva could be long or difficult, but it’s done on the day. Your examiners could be kind or questioning (or both!) and still you can respond to everything.

Expectations help to frame the viva situation. Preparation, hard work and the PhD journey help to succeed in your viva reality.

Nathan

Recognise Your Research

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To get ready for your viva you, in part, have to recognise and accept that you’ve done good work over a long period of time. You have to look at your research and be able to say, “This is good – and this is why it’s good.” Many parts of viva preparation can help you get ready for this:

  • Read your thesis and add a Post-it Note every time you find a good piece of research.
  • Check your notes and make a list of everything that stands out.
  • Take time to share with others what’s valuable from the last few years of work.
  • Write a summary for yourself outlining what you’re most proud of in your research.

In preparation for your viva, invest time in recognising your research for what it is: a significant, original contribution to knowledge. Take some time to prepare and be confident that you can say what you’ve done – and why it matters.

Nathan

The Formality

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There’s a general expectation that a candidate will pass their viva if they’ve submitted their thesis. The pass rate is so high that reaching that stage is a really good sign that success will follow in due course.

But the viva is not simply like ticking a box on some paperwork, nor is it a simple process in general. Perhaps compared to the scale of the rest of the PhD journey we could say it was “a formality” but only with reference to that great scale!

Expect to succeed – but also expect your examiners to be prepared, to do their jobs, to ask questions and expect you to respond. Do the work that’s needed, following a pattern of work and dedication that you have demonstrated over the course of your PhD and perhaps the viva will feel – with hindsight – like a formality.

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