Your Work Matters
In preparation for your viva, take some time to reflect on why your work makes a difference. Unpick the ideas that matter, reflect on why your work is valuable. Your examiners want to talk to you about why your research...
contribution
7 Questions To Explore Your Contribution
The topic of what makes your thesis a significant, original contribution is going to come up in your viva. Your examiners are not going to simply ask “What makes your work significant? What makes it original?” Reflecting on different questions...
Why Did You Do It?
Why did you work on your PhD? Is it because you had a passion? You had curiosity you had to explore? Did you want to work with your supervisor and together steered things to the work that became your PhD?...
Interesting Decisions
Seth Godin writes recently of “the magic of trade-offs” – an idea that resonated with my own memories of doing a PhD. I remember writing only a few paragraphs about an application for one of my results, because I knew...
The Most Important
What are the most important papers or ideas that started your research journey? What were the most important days of your PhD? What are the most important passages in your thesis? Where did you do the most important work of...
Your Contribution, Simply
To reach submission you must have made a contribution: you must have done something. Reflecting before the viva and making notes, even using a simple question, can be quite powerful. To begin with, three simple questions: Why did you do it? How...
What Have You Forgotten?
I believe it’s worth reflecting on this a little before the viva. What have you forgotten? Perhaps you can’t know for sure. You’ve had to edit out papers, ideas and references that didn’t fit. You forgot them, to concentrate on...
Values & Valuable
Different people value different things. Whether or not a job, a house, a partner, a research idea or anything else is suitable or good to you will depend on what you see as valuable. For your thesis then, there are...
Stars and Black Holes
We can see stars directly. Some are big, some are small (relatively speaking), some are bright, some less so, but so long as nothing is in the way, they’re there. We can’t see black holes directly. They’re tricky, difficult to...
New And Improved
How would you advertise your research? Do you have an exciting and original take on classic ideas? Do you have a new and improved way of looking at things? Is your work wholly original, never-before-seen concepts? Advertising works. When we...