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Nathan

Who’s Who

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For some time I’ve suggested that researchers make an edited bibliography as part of their viva prep. If you have 200 references, what are the 20 most important? Make a list and add a few details to each of them: which chapter they’re most important to, why, and so on.

Last month at a workshop in Leeds, a participant gave me a brilliant hack of this idea. Think about the main researchers you’ve included in your bibliography, or who are big names in your field. Make a list and write a couple of sentences for each to summarise their research or opinions. Creating the list helps you to think about your field, and afterwards you have a resource to refer to as you prepare for the viva.

Nathan

Let’s Pretend

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I am a huge fan of role-playing games. I love everything about them, from playing them to running them, investigating how they work and the kinds of play that they can produce. I have a side project as a role-playing game publisher, although my ambitions to date have been quite modest.

Anyway! One of the things I like most about them is the opportunity they give people to pretend to be someone else. You’re no longer a mild-mannered skills trainer, you’re a warrior-wizard with strange powers and a thirst for revenge! For a few hours you can step back from the real world and be someone else, somewhere else.

An element of role-playing could be really useful before the viva too. A mock viva is a kind of role-play, but there are other opportunities.

  • Imagine you’re an examiner. How do you read a thesis? What questions would come to mind?
  • Imagine you’re your supervisor. What advice would help a researcher? What could you do to help?
  • Imagine you’re one of your friends. Do you know what a viva is? What questions do you have for your friend? How can you help?
  • Imagine you’re you in the viva. How is it going? How are you feeling?
  • Imagine you’ve succeeded. How did you do it? What helped you pass the viva?

Some people act when they role-play; others just think and imagine. Try it out for yourself. Reflect on what questions or ideas come up, and see how they can help you be ready for the viva.

Nathan

Do Not Forget

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You did all the work that you got this far.

Whether it’s your transfer viva, a conference presentation, your viva, walking across a stage somewhere to shake a hand and collect a scroll – you did that. No one else. On Day One of the PhD you were supposed to be there. On Day 1000 you were supposed to be there. Keep going, and when you get the chance, tell people about it. Your story might help someone.

Nathan

More Than Gold Letters

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After the dust of my examiners’ questions had settled and all the corrections were done I got to make some pretty nice hardbacks. My name and the title of my thesis was in gold on the cover! I was done! My thesis was great!

Except… I thought I would feel something. I was happy, sort of, I guess… And I knew that finishing my PhD was a milestone. I wasn’t expecting fireworks, or a band to strike up, but I thought I would feel something.

The end of my PhD was an anticlimax, I didn’t feel much of anything. At the time. As the months went on I realised that it was something big. It opened doors for me. It gave me a skill set that I use and develop nearly a decade later. It helped to give me a perspective on the world and shape my values. I co-authored a couple of papers and contributed to my field too.

My story might not mirror yours: it may be that you are totally over the moon after your viva. But you might not. Just a friendly word: it might take a while to sink in. Regardless, I think most PhDs, in time, come to realise that the PhD is so much more than a book with your name in gold letters on the cover, however cool that looks.

Nathan

9 Questions For The End Of The PhD

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How often did you reflect during your PhD? Here are nine questions to help with some end of PhD reflection. Write or record answers for them. Your examiners are unlikely to ask some of these, but perhaps you’ll find some new insights.

  1. What’s your PhD worth?
  2. What does your PhD mean?
  3. What will you do next?
  4. What can you do now that you couldn’t do at the start?
  5. What do you know now that you didn’t know at the start?
  6. What was the greatest challenge you overcame?
  7. How did you do it?
  8. What did you leave unfinished?
  9. How do you feel now you’re at the end?

Come back to your answers after the viva. See if any of them have changed. If they have, why?

Nathan

Hierarchy of Worries

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I record every question I get asked in workshops. The text document runs to over 15,000 words now. Over time I see trends and themes, and they help me to think about how I evolve the workshop.

In particular I see the worries of candidates collect in three groups:

  • First, people worry that there could be something wrong with their research;
  • Second, they worry that they may have made a mistake in the write-up;
  • Third, they worry that they may not be able to answer a question from their examiners.

I get lots of questions related to all these areas, and I think they’re arranged in a hierarchy. I think people are more worried about the second kind of worries than they are the first; I think they’re more worried about the third kind than the second. It makes a certain kind of sense. Research takes a long time to mature – you know everything you’ve done, everything you thought of doing, you learned from so many mistakes and successes. You know your research. Writing up took less time – however much you know about your research, there’s a chance that you’ve made a significant typo or forgotten something. You may have expressed something in a clumsy way. It’s not all that likely.

Whatever you did in your research and write-up though, you have no way of knowing exactly what your examiners will ask. There are lots of common questions, but your viva is a custom exam: you can’t predict every question or how you might respond.

Three common groups of worries, but some are more worrying than others. What do you do?

  • Worried that something is wrong with your research? Map out your methods. Check the core literature. Test your assumptions again. Try to explain it to someone who doesn’t know that much.
  • Worried that you’ve slipped up somewhere in your thesis? Get more feedback. Read it closely, line by line, no skimming. Ask a friend to proofread. Read it aloud to check that it makes sense.
  • Worried about your examiners’ questions? Practise answering questions. Have a mock viva. Use a list of common viva questions and record your answers. Get friends to ask you any and every question about your research.

Feeling worried? That’s OK. Work your way past the worries.

Nathan

Cheatsheet

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What if you wanted to tell a friend about your research and you only had one sheet of paper? What would you put on this cheatsheet?

Would it have lots of pictures? Bullet-points? Would your abstract feature? And would it be black and white or full colour?

What would you leave out? What must you include? Do they need to know anything else in order to understand what you’re telling them?

Your friend would probably thank you, it’d be a neat insight into what you do.

If you do this, make two copies and keep one. You do valuable prep in creating the cheatsheet and then have a resource to refresh your memory later.

Nathan

Nevermind

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I didn’t listen to Nevermind by Nirvana when it came out. I was in my teens in the 90s, but for some reason the album never connected with me. Of course, I heard Smells Like Teen Spirit but it just sounded loud and angry. I didn’t get it.

In my thesis I wrote a really detailed explanation of how I produced a particular algorithm. I walked the reader through it step by step. And it didn’t connect with my examiners. They thought it read like a story. They didn’t get it.

In both cases though, there was an opportunity to correct. In my viva I was able to explain the process, and my examiners got it. They asked me to re-write my explanation, but they understood what I was trying to get across: my thesis was better as a result.

And last month I listened to Nevermind for the first time: life is better as a result.

Nathan

Fake It ‘Til You Make It?

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I love Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, the web series by Jerry Seinfeld where he interviews comedians in ca- well, you probably get the idea. One of my favourite episodes is with Steve Martin. It’s funny and well worth a watch, and his book Born Standing Up is also really great. In the episode, he describes how in his early career he made a conscious decision to “fake confidence.” He wanted his audience to think he was happy and at ease with what he was doing.

Seinfeld asks how that is any different from actually being confident, because presumably the output of confidence or faking confidence is the same – people think you are!

“Fake it ’til you make it!” I see this advice a lot. Show confidence even if you don’t feel it. Don’t let them see fear. But that kind of pressure can take a toll. If the output of faking and being confident – assuming that you can successfully fake it – is the perception of confidence… wouldn’t it be better to work on being confident? If someone feels nervous or uncertain, and if that goes so far as to knock their confidence, it would be so much more rewarding to do something to build confidence back up rather than try to fake it.

When it comes to the viva, I hope that every candidate feels confident – which doesn’t mean that they won’t feel nervous, they could still have some anxieties. To my mind there are three areas in particular that any viva candidate can feel confident about:

  • They can feel confident in their work, which has taken time to develop.
  • They can feel confident about the choices they’ve made, and if they have to, can explain them.
  • They can feel confident in their talents, their competence, their abilities as a researcher – things which have necessarily developed over the course of research.

If you’re near the end of your PhD, viva just around the corner, it’s OK to feel nervous – but it’s right to be able to look at yourself and everything you’ve done to get there and feel confident in your achievements. You didn’t just stumble upon the end of your PhD.

When it comes to the viva, it’s not fake it ’til you make it: you’ve made it.

Nathan

Signs of Preparation

Daily Post

Bookmarks, Post Its and annotation in your thesis help you, but they’re also a signal. They tell your examiners you have prepared for the viva. You’ve read your thesis and clearly thought about it a lot since submission. At the start of the viva it says, “I’m ready.” By that point, if you’ve done the work, you are.

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