Deep Down
Nervous. Anxious. Concerned. Worried. Afraid. If any of these words describe how you feel about your viva then you need to ask why. They don’t all mean the same thing. Be sure of which best describes the situation, then dig...
Daily viva help for PhDs
Nervous. Anxious. Concerned. Worried. Afraid. If any of these words describe how you feel about your viva then you need to ask why. They don’t all mean the same thing. Be sure of which best describes the situation, then dig...
PhD candidates can get a sense of what to expect for their viva from reading their institution’s regulations, learning about general viva experiences and asking about recent vivas in their department. Together these create expectations. Some expectations will be really...
Talk to your supervisor around submission time to get a sense of how they can support you when you prepare for your viva. Your supervisor is best-placed to offer advice and perspective as you get ready. You might not need...
With sixty minutes before your viva what are you going to do? Read a few more pages a few more times? Check through your notes again? Knock on your supervisor’s door to ask one more question? Pace to try and...
Are there any red flags for examiner selection? Are there people I should try to avoid? Let’s start with a caveat: there are people in every sphere of life who build up a clear reputation for behaving badly. In academia,...
Viva prep involves practical tasks like reading your thesis, making notes and having a mock viva, as well as building up your self-confidence for meeting your examiners. There’s no particular checklist that every candidate must do. You figure out what...
Some candidates feel nervous because of what they did in their thesis. Is it enough? Some people feel nervous because of what they haven’t done. Have they missed something? Some feel nervous because of who there examiners are. Will their...
We’ve become a little obsessed with puzzles and escape rooms in our house. It’s odd because we’ve not actually visited a real-life one yet! My family has been enjoying mystery and challenge programmes that involve escape rooms, as well as...
Viva failure is exceptionally rare. I’ve asked graduate schools, doctoral colleges and doctoral training programmes: they consistently tell me around one in one thousand vivas result in failure. That’s not zero, but I think we can reasonably deduce a few...
Lots of viva worries are centred around responding to questions. Viva Worry 1: I’ll freeze. Viva Worry 2: My examiners will ask me something difficult. Viva Worry 3: I’ll get a question I can’t answer. A deeper worry is that some combination of...