How Can I Know?
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...
Daily viva help for PhDs
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....
Every PhD candidate in their viva is, at some point and in some way, going to need to talk about their contribution. Examiners will raise the topic and the candidate will need to talk about why their research is significant...
I love Arnold Schwarzenegger’s rejection of being described as a “self-made” man. He’s responded to that thought in many interviews and talks but writes emphatically about it in the foreword to Tim Ferriss’s book, Tools of Titans: I am not a...