The Missing Things
I used to travel a lot. In a busy month I might spend upwards of forty or fifty hours in transit, shuttling between cities in the UK by train, going the final mile or two on foot or in a...
Daily viva help for PhDs
I used to travel a lot. In a busy month I might spend upwards of forty or fifty hours in transit, shuttling between cities in the UK by train, going the final mile or two on foot or in a...
Take time to stop and think. Reflect on your PhD. Reflect on the journey. The peaks and troughs of hard work and difficult circumstances that have brought you this far. Not far to go now. Reflect on what you need...
Sometimes in a PhD you might have to work an extra hour, stay a little longer, try again or keep going even if you don’t want to. Viva prep shouldn’t be one of those times. Whatever your daily circumstances, bringing viva...
My hero Seth Godin describes anxiety as “failing in advance”. In seminars I would estimate at least a third of candidates I ask describe themselves as nervous, anxious or worried about their chances of viva success – with anxiety being...
Over the last year I’ve introduced my daughter to more and more video games. While we have different tastes and skill levels, we both love exploring, creating things within games and the simply joy of playing. What neither of us...
Your viva prep won’t take all that long. A pause on the day won’t be more than a few seconds. Whatever length you anticipate for your viva it will be completed very quickly – especially if you compare it to...
I enjoy seeing viva success shared on Twitter. It’s fun to see people tagging posts #PhinisheD or #PhDone. I like seeing people celebrate their hard work, and others joining in to acknowledge the dedication and effort that goes into a...
The viva is an oral exam at the end of the PhD. You submit a written thesis based on your research in advance. Typically two examiners, one internal and one external, will read your thesis carefully. In the viva they facilitate...
An examiner could gently challenge you on why you didn’t use a certain method. Or they might wonder what would happen if you did X instead of Y. What if you had tested for this instead of that, and so...
Five years ago today I ran my first ever independent workshop. I was so excited! It was a big step: to go from being invited by universities to meet PhD candidates, now instead I was inviting them to meet me....