I’ve thought a lot about what candidates have told me for the last ten years. I’ve been in a fortunate position to meet many thousands of postgraduate researchers, and to help them get through various stages of their PhD. And when you listen for long enough you notice patterns. Sometimes it’s the things that are said often but sometimes it’s how things are said.
And I think I know what the greatest worry of postgraduate researchers is as they get closer to the viva.
It’s not that examiners won’t like their work.
It’s not that the thesis will be somehow incomplete.
And it’s not that they will go blank or have to say “I don’t know” to a question.
The greatest worry is that they will get to the viva and discover that they are not who they think they are.
They will find out that they are not talented. They will find in that moment that they are not as clever, as quick or as resourceful as they had hoped. They will find out that they are not as knowledgeable as they thought they were. This doubt can be held quite deeply within; the fear, the worry that you are not as good, as clever, as confident as you think.
This kind of self-doubt can be hard to beat. I think a solution can be found though in questions and reflection. If you’re doubting yourself at all before the viva then start with these two questions:
- How else could you have got this far?
- What can you point to in your research that’s great?
The first question is needed to start to unpick doubt. Doing a PhD is hard. While you can be fortunate you can’t just be lucky. You can’t get to submission and the viva by chance alone. There’s no other explanation other than you must have worked for it. That work must have produced something. The second question is useful to start exploring just what that might be. If you list the great things that have come out of your research you can start to believe that you’re great too.
Self-doubt can be a hard problem, but it’s not intractable.
Rather than beat away your fear it might be better to build up your bravery instead.