Make Plans
Make a plan for submission. Set milestones to help keep you on track. Check the details for the official things you need to do. Maybe ask a friend to go with you if you have to submit paper copies and...
Daily viva help for PhDs
Make a plan for submission. Set milestones to help keep you on track. Check the details for the official things you need to do. Maybe ask a friend to go with you if you have to submit paper copies and...
The viva is nearly-but-not-quite the end of the PhD journey. It really won’t take much to get ready for it. You’ll get to have a conversation with two interested academics about your research. Once your viva is finished and your...
If you have doubts that you’ve done enough, that your thesis is good enough or that you are good enough then take a little time to reflect on what you’ve done. How many days did you do the work? How...
The two most useful questions for a PhD candidate to reflect on, particularly after submission, are: “When is my viva?” and “How do I feel?” The first is often a useful prompt to realise that there is still time. There’s...
The practical tasks involved in viva prep are not hard, but shifting focus to do the work can be tough. Why? Perhaps because you’ve done it all before. You did this work! Haven’t you done enough already? You did the...
Adding to your thesis is a helpful part of viva prep. Including bookmarks, underlining words or sections, writing notes in the margin or placing sticky tabs to mark things out – there’s 101 things you could do! Thankfully you don’t...
Your examiners are not attending a play. They don’t want you to sit (or stand) and talk at them for hours. They want a conversation. They want you to respond rather than recite. There might be tricky parts of your...
You will survive – manage to keep going in difficult circumstances – because you’ve done that throughout your PhD. You will most likely thrive too – grow, develop and be successful. Prepare rather than perfect. You can get ready for the conversation...
In the viva, no candidate wants to say the wrong thing. No-one wants to misremember a detail or misquote a paper. No-one wants to go blank and say the first thing, the silly thing, the wrong thing. No-one wants to...
We can look at all of the numbers for the viva – pass rates, lengths, percentages of candidates told they’ve passed at the start, correlation of questions and disciplines – and see lots of little details about the general expectations....