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Month: October 2023

Nathan

How Else?

Daily Post

It’s not wrong to be nervous about your viva. Expectations and preparations help, but you won’t know exactly what it’s like until you’re there.

You want to succeed and that makes it a challenge, even if you’ve had conversations like this in the past.

 

You can be nervous, but you can also be ready. How else could you have got to submission and the viva?

You did the work.

You read a lot.

You learned a lot.

You wrote a lot.

You grew and developed and became more than you were when you started your PhD journey.

You know more now than you did at the beginning, not by chance or through osmosis, but through working hard.

You worked hard and that hard work paid off. You wrote your thesis with care, submitted your best effort.

 

You are not lucky. You are dedicated – you are good enough.

How else could you have got this far?

Nathan

Community Matters

Daily Post

You’re not alone as you prepare for your viva. Your are part of a research community: your department, your research network and even random people you know on social media. Every member of this community can play a part in helping you.

  • Senior academics, like your supervisor and others, can help you understand what’s involved in the viva. What do they do to get ready as examiners? What do they look for? What does that mean for you?
  • PhD graduates from your department can share what they did to get ready and what happened. What helped them? What happened at their viva? What do they recommend you do?
  • Other PhD candidates can help you to get ready now. Who has time? What do you need? Does anyone have time to chat with you or listen to you talk about your research?

You’re the only person who can go to your viva and meet with your examiners. It’s your viva – but before then there is a lot of support available to you.

And after your viva you have the opportunity to support others in your community too.

Nathan

Actions & Improvements

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There are many actions, big and small, that you can take to improve your readiness for the viva.

  • Placing a sticky note at the start of each chapter can help you navigate your thesis more easily.
  • Taking half an hour to reflect and list key references can help you make connections about your research.
  • Preparing for and having a mock viva can help your confidence grow for meeting your examiners.
  • Simply writing one short sentence – you can do this – at the start of your thesis can give you a little boost.
  • Describing your research to a friend over coffee can help you practise sharing ideas.
  • A two-hour meeting with your supervisor can help you review ideas, key questions and difficult problems.

There are many actions, big and small, that you can take to improve your readiness for the viva. Some may only help a little, but lots of small actions can add up to a huge difference.

Don’t neglect the little things – and don’t put off the big tasks!

Nathan

The Minimum

Daily Post

What’s the minimum amount of viva prep I can get away with?

There are no bad questions in webinars, no stupid questions, but there are questions that surprise me!

 

What’s the minimum? A core set of tasks perhaps – reading, checking, practising – or a time period to do the work in.

What’s the minimum? Well, all you “need” is to submit a thesis and attend on the day of the viva. That would be the absolute minimum, right?

What’s the minimum? Maybe we need a better question. Charitably, I can imagine that the person asking the question is stressed, tired, overwhelmed and wondering what they can do to fit in what could feel like a lot of work.

Maybe instead of what’s the minimum? we can focus on how do I get ready if I’m busy?

You plan, you break the tasks down, you give yourself a generous period of time to do the work, you ask for help and so on.

 

And at a minimum, you’ve invested three years of work when you meet your examiners. There’s still more work needed to get ready for the viva, but don’t forget the foundations you’re building on to be ready for that conversation.

Nathan

Anti-Expectations

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There are lots of key viva expectations, based around the typical length, the structure, tone and overall (high!) pass rate.

There are also anti-expectations that are much more particular to individuals: beliefs and expectations that, despite the general picture, something will go wrong this time, for them. Hardworking, capable candidates can come to believe that…

  • …they won’t pass, despite what everyone says.
  • …examiners are not going to be fair, they’ll just look for problems and mistakes.
  • …they just can’t be ready in time for the viva.

With viva anti-expectations, worries are jumped on and magnified. Details from one viva story are generalised. Anxieties blossom through misunderstanding and become something difficult to be shifted.

 

Of course, every viva is unique. It would be ridiculous to claim that every viva is free from problems. But the overwhelming evidence from the stories presented and the available understanding of the general situation is that vivas are fair, examiners are reasonable and prepared, vivas are structured and they can be prepared for.

If you hold any anti-expectations, then look for the evidence that supports them. Is it convincing? Is there even evidence for what you’re expecting?

Or is it better to explore the general expectations of the viva that you can use to get ready?

Nathan

What Will It Take?

Daily Post

When you start to prepare for your viva, make a list of what you will need to feel prepared. Ask yourself:

  • What practical materials do you need to help you get ready?
  • How much time do you have to invest?
  • Who do you need to consult with?
  • What key tasks do you have to have finished?
  • What activities will you engage with?
  • What outputs or outcomes will help you to know that you are prepared?

With all of these questions responded to and items listed, you have a checklist. The more you mark off, the closer you are to being sure you’re ready. Even if you can’t get everything – say, if you can’t have a mock viva – if you manage most things then you can feel pretty confident for the big day.

What will it take for you to feel ready? Make a list and do as much as you can.

Nathan

One Last Time

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It’s likely that you will have corrections to complete after your viva. You’ll probably still need to discuss your work with your supervisors. And it’s possible that you might want to do more work based on your thesis research, whether that’s as an academic at a university or just for your own private reasons.

And still the viva is most likely that one last time when you will have a chance to sit down and talk with an eager, interested audience about what you’ve been doing for years of work. Not just a part of it, not just a paper or a poster. Hours to talk about everything you’ve done and all that it means.

One last time.

Make the most of it.

Nathan

Preparing For Examiners

Daily Post

When you know who your examiners will be, start your preparations for meeting them by reflecting on three questions:

  • Why have these people been chosen?
  • How does your work connect with what they do?
  • What do you need to do to prepare now?

Reflect and make notes on who your examiners are and what they do, then think about what you need to do to get ready for them.

Nathan

True or False

Daily Post

It’s true that binary questions – yes or no, true or false, A or B – could feature in a viva as a means of simply qualifying details.

It’s a false expectation to think binary questions are the dominant format of the viva though.

The viva is a discussion, not a quiz. Engaging well at yours means sharing responses to questions, not merely providing short answers.

Nathan

Summaries Aren’t Scripts

Daily Post

There are lots of good reasons to write summaries of your thesis, your research or aspects of both as part of your viva preparation.

  • Writing a summary helps you to focus on what matters.
  • A summary can help you to collect and organise your thinking.
  • Creating a summary can help you to identify what matters too.

A summary can be a list of points or a page of paragraphs, written in ten minutes or drafted carefully over an hour.

A summary is not a script though. You might use a helpful question to prompt writing: there are many viva question resources on the internet that provide these. Still, your examiners are not expecting memorised responses and hyper-polished notes that you read from.

The summary helps you prepare for the viva. It’s not a script to read from during the viva.

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