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Nathan

The Best Of The Best Of Viva Survivors 2022

Daily Post

At the end of December I shared five days of posts recapping my favourite writing from 2022. In case you missed that or you’re looking for some helpful highlights, here’s the best of those five days, with links to each round-up post!

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Viva Prep – I was very happy to reshare lots of help connected with viva prep, but especially A Helpful Acronym, one of the best little ideas related to viva help I’ve had!

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Reflections – I like having the space with this blog to do things a little different sometimes. The Red Button is certainly different, but hopefully contains a point well worth considering before the viva.

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Short Posts – Making A Difference is a helpful reminder!

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Confidence – Last year I worked with almost 1000 postgraduate researchers in viva-related sessions. Daily Confidence was inspired by something written in the chat at one of those sessions, a point that I’ve been thinking about a lot.

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Surviving – The definition of survive is manage to keep going in difficult circumstances. It’s only natural then that at some point I would write a post called Keep Going, so that I could dig into that idea a little more.

Following that last theme, in May 2022 I published a book containing the best of the first five years of the Viva Survivors daily blog: Keep Going: A Viva Survivors Anthology.

There are many posts I could highlight from the last year of Viva Survivors, but if you’re more future-focussed then subscribe and get a new piece of viva help in your inbox every day 🙂

Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Surviving

Daily Post

Well done! If you’re reading this you did it. You made it through another tough year. You survived 2022. Was it more challenging than previous years for you? How are you coping? And how ready are you for 2023?

2022 was the year I finally got COVID (thankfully not too serious and thankfully long recovered now). 2022 was the year I celebrated five years of publishing this blog. I shared another post marking how different life has become. And 2022 was another year where I continued to share thoughts on surviving on this blog, because I think it helps with the context of the viva and what someone has to do to succeed.

  • Verbs For The Viva – words matter, so it helps to keep the right ones in mind.
  • Not To Plan – an encouragement about what the last few years might mean…
  • Disrupted & Different – …and some more thoughts about preparing for a pandemic-influenced viva.
  • One More Time – that’s what the viva is, one more time after many times before.
  • Keep Going – two words that are worth exploring.

Another year. Again, well done.

Tomorrow we start a new one. You know what you need to do. You can decide how you will do it. Keep focussed on why you’re doing it and you’ll get there.

PS: the Viva Survivors blog celebrated five years of daily posts earlier this year! To mark the journey so far I wrote and published “Keep Going – A Viva Survivors Anthology” – a curated collection of the best of the first five years. If you’re looking for viva help then this blog is and always will be free – if you want to support the blog and get an awesome book as well, then take a look at the options at the link. Thanks!

Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Confidence

Daily Post

Years of work, weeks of prep and then… How will you feel at your viva?

Feeling nervous isn’t wrong but it doesn’t feel right. It’s a recognition that something matters: your viva and the outcome matter a lot. What can you do to feel confident for your viva? That’s a big question that occupies a lot of my thinking for this blog and for the work I do in webinars. Here are some of my favourite thoughts on the topic for this year:

Confidence is a skill and a story, a journey and a target. It’s how you feel and how you act. There are lots of ways to frame it and lots of things you can do to grow it for yourself, particularly in advance of your viva.

Tomorrow we finish the review of the year with the topic of surviving.

PS: the Viva Survivors blog celebrated five years of daily posts earlier this year! To mark the journey so far I wrote and published “Keep Going – A Viva Survivors Anthology” – a curated collection of the best of the first five years. If you’re looking for viva help then this blog is and always will be free – if you want to support the blog and get an awesome book as well, then take a look at the options at the link. Thanks!

Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Short Posts

Daily Post

I very rarely set out to write a long post. Viva Survivors posts tend to be around 200 words, but sometimes they can be a lot shorter, as with these six posts on a range of topics:

And how about one more? Making A Difference – something you must do over the course of your PhD!

There are two more days of my review of 2022. Tomorrow we explore confidence and the day after we finish the year by looking at the topic of surviving.

PS: the Viva Survivors blog celebrated five years of daily posts earlier this year! To mark the journey so far I wrote and published “Keep Going – A Viva Survivors Anthology” – a curated collection of the best of the first five years. If you’re looking for viva help then this blog is and always will be free – if you want to support the blog and get an awesome book as well, then take a look at the options at the link. Thanks!

Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Reflections

Daily Post

We continue the review of the year today with some of my favourite reflections about the viva.

I like these sort of posts, though I don’t tend to write them every day. They often involve noticing something about the viva that is odd, or connecting something of the viva with something in the wider world. And sometimes, as with the first post on today’s list, they involve telling a story:

  • The Red Button – a little story with a big point.
  • Two Pictures – a post about communicating the picture of your research that you see, to someone who can’t see what you see.
  • Map, Compass, Landmarks – a little reflection on how we think about what to expect for the viva.
  • The Same, But Different – contrasting in-person and video vivas.
  • Worry – where do you give your focus when you worry? How does that help?
  • Fuses & Feelings – thinking about what trips us up and what we can do about it.

Stop. Breathe. Think. Reflect. What’s standing out about your year? What do you notice about your PhD journey? And what does that mean?

Tomorrow: some of the shortest thoughts I’ve shared this year!

PS: the Viva Survivors blog celebrated five years of daily posts earlier this year! To mark the journey so far I wrote and published “Keep Going – A Viva Survivors Anthology” – a curated collection of the best of the first five years. If you’re looking for viva help then this blog is and always will be free – if you want to support the blog and get an awesome book as well, then take a look at the options at the link. Thanks!

Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Viva Prep

Daily Post

I finish every year of Viva Survivors with a look back at some of my favourite posts from the year. In the coming days I’ll share topics like surviving and confidence, as well as general reflections on the viva and some of my favourite short posts.

Today we start with viva prep as that feeds into lots of areas related to the viva. What can you do to get ready and how do you do it? Here are some ideas:

  • The Busy Factor – to begin with, advice on getting ready that helps if you’re busy – and helps if you’re not!
  • Find Five – prompts for starting viva prep.
  • Annotated For You – why and how to annotate your thesis, with examples of what you could do.
  • Summary Values – a short reflection on why writing summaries can help your viva prep and viva.
  • A Helpful Acronym – a long overdue return to writing about one of my favourite ideas for viva prep!

Viva prep is not a huge amount of work. A little thought in how you do it can make a big difference in terms of how you feel. Tomorrow: some of my favourite reflections from Viva Survivors 2022!

PS: the Viva Survivors blog celebrated five years of daily posts earlier this year! To mark the journey so far I wrote and published “Keep Going – A Viva Survivors Anthology” – a curated collection of the best of the first five years. If you’re looking for viva help then this blog is and always will be free – if you want to support the blog and get an awesome book as well, then take a look at the options at the link. Thanks!