Best of Viva Survivors 2018: Reflections & Summaries

To finish 2018 I’m sharing my favourite posts from the last year. Today we’ll take a look at several posts on the topic of reflections & summaries. It’s useful to take a step back from your research and your thesis and think about what it all means. If you can then create a concrete resource from that – a written summary, a list of points or a mindmap – then you’ve made something valuable.

I hope these posts help you reflect on your research as your viva approaches. I’m really quite proud of 7776 Mini-Vivas and if you’ve used it do drop me a line to let me know what you think! And do share these “best of” posts over the coming days, retweets are always welcome!

Best of Viva Survivors 2018: Viva Prep

To finish 2018 I’m sharing my favourite posts from the last year. I’ll start as I did last year with the topic of viva prep, something that’s always in my mind because of this blog and the sessions that I deliver. Here are some of the most useful posts from the last twelve months.

I hope these posts give you a good foundation if you’re preparing for your viva soon. Seen anything else you think is useful for viva prep? Let me know! And do share these “best of” posts with any friends whose vivas are in the near future 🙂

Happy Christmas!

I’m taking the next few days off from posting. If you’re preparing for your viva because it’s in January, I hope you still find time to switch off from your preparations. They can wait, and however you mark this time of year, spend time with people you love rather than your thesis.

The Viva Survivors blog will return on the 27th for five days of links to my best posts of this year. If you’re looking for help with viva prep, want to explore questions or tips, or are just looking for some reflections on the viva and confidence then check out those posts.

Very best wishes to you and yours, and thank you for reading!

Nathan

Plan The Party

I’ve written before about how nervousness is strongly correlated with important things. You have a choice: you get to pick which you give attention to: do you try to make yourself feel less nervous or try to do the important thing better?

There’s also a strong correlation between important things and wanting to pay special attention to those things. Pay attention to the celebration. Decide how you are going to mark it.

Plan the party, if you’re going to have one; figure out the reward, if that’s more your thing. Tell your friends, “Help me fix this in my mind as a big deal!”

Because it is a big deal. Passing the viva, finishing the PhD, is a very big deal.

Thinking again, perhaps it’s not that there is a correlation between the important thing and wanting to celebrate it. Perhaps the celebration is a sign it is an important thing?

How Did You Get Here?

Recently, I was very happy to be invited to contribute my career story to the Sheffield v i s t a blog.

I like to reflect, and summarising ten years of work in a thousand words was an interesting challenge. It gave me a lot to think about: “How did this happen? How did I end up doing this?” The post for v i s t a was a really useful exercise for me, and I hope it’s interesting and useful for lots of other people who might read it too. Do drop me an email if you have any follow-up questions!

It reminded me of a quote I’ve shared on the blog before: “The man on the top of the mountain didn’t fall there.”

If you’re coming to the end of your PhD, take a moment to look back.

Figure out how you got to where you are now. It didn’t happen by chance.

You’ve only got where you are by being good at what you do. You can keep doing that in the viva.

Snacks

Take snacks.

I’ve heard of relatively few instances where refreshments were provided at a candidate’s viva. Etiquette seems to suggest not eating in the viva; do at least take a bottle of water with you.

At the break or immediately after the viva you can feel drained from the effort, however pleasant your viva might be. Take food that might help. You might not want to eat in front of your examiners, but you might need to eat something in those intervals.

In short: don’t eat in the viva, but don’t go to the viva without taking food with you!

Why You Didn’t Do More

You didn’t read that paper because there are lots of papers, and you can’t read them all.

You didn’t run that experiment because you ran a hundred others and it didn’t seem like that one would make a difference.

You haven’t thought about that, but you’ve thought about lots of other things.

You haven’t thought about this, but you can think about it right now and offer an opinion.

You didn’t do the thing your examiners suggest because you have reasons.

You didn’t do the other thing they’re thinking about because your supervisor told you it wasn’t worth it, and you agreed.

You didn’t do more because there is only so much time, so much effort, so much focus, so much thought you can put into a PhD. It’s big, but you can’t do everything.

When you think about why you didn’t do more, just pause and get your reasons in order. You will have them. You’ve not acted without thought. Put your reasons across. Maybe your examiners will want to talk more about it, maybe not.

Finally, you couldn’t do everything, but you can reflect on everything you did do. Remember your reasons for everything you have achieved, and don’t get bogged down in all of the things you haven’t done.

Difficult Circumstances

“Viva Survivor” is catchy, but it can also sound a little negative to some ears. I checked the definition of survive a while back and was heartened to see a definition that matched my intent on using the phrase so widely: manage to keep going in difficult circumstances.

Most vivas are positive, engaging discussions that end well, but that doesn’t mean even the best viva doesn’t have difficult circumstances. Candidates are being examined on original work. For most candidates, this is the first time they have ever written a work of that length.

There are realistic expectations for the viva, but even so there is no predicting what will happen. It’s difficult to know what questions will be asked, what conclusions examiners might have, or even for a candidate to know how they might feel about the process as it happens.

The viva could be difficult, but that doesn’t mean it is an all-or-nothing challenge, or that a candidate should have doubts about whether or not they are up to the task.

If your viva is coming up, reflect: how many difficult circumstances have you faced and overcome during your PhD?

You can manage one more time.

Thesis Annotation Tips

Your thesis is a great help to begin with in the viva. Adding notes helps you reflect on what’s there and can make it better for the viva. Here are seven kinds of annotations that can really help.

  1. Add a small Post-it Note to the start of each chapter to make your thesis easier to navigate.
  2. Underline typos that you spot with the same colour ink.
  3. Unpick tricky passages with short descriptions in the margin.
  4. Create a thesis commentary by summarising each page in ten words or less at the top of the page.
  5. Highlight key references in your thesis.
  6. Use large Post-it Notes to summarise large blocks of text or to replace vague sentences.
  7. Add small Post-it Notes to draw attention to important sections of your thesis.

Think about what else would make your thesis even better than it already is. You’re making a special edition with an audience of one: it only has to be better for you.

Breaking The Ice

It’s natural to be a little nervous at the start of the viva. You and your examiners want it to go well, and everyone probably has a sense that as long as it starts well things will be fine. Examiners often have definite ideas of how they are going to start the viva.

They may have key questions to open proceedings. Later they may be happy to let the discussion go where it needs to, but to begin with they want a question they know will give the candidate a chance to shine. Not a question you need to have a pre-prepared answer for, but something you will surely have thought about and talked about before. It acts as a way to break the ice.

Sometimes examiners invite the candidate to give a presentation to start the viva. There’s nothing negative about this request: it’s simply one way to get things going. While there could be some nervousness around presenting, it can be a useful opportunity as it gives the candidate some control about how the viva begins. Again, once those first few minutes have passed without serious problem, the level of nerves and stress in the room can drop.

Getting going is one of the hardest parts of the viva. There are different ways that it can start, but don’t forget to do what you can to manage your own nerves and confidence at the beginning. It’s not all up to chance.