Episode 50: Thank You

Episode 50! In some ways it has come around really quickly, and in others it feels like it has been a long time coming. This is a very different sort-of episode: just me talking for a little while. The Viva Survivors Podcast has been around for nearly three and a half years, and it feels like a good time to say a lot of thank yous, as well as reflect on where the podcast has come from, the opportunities that have come my way and talk about my plans for the future.

As another thank you, I’m offering 50% off all of my ebooks available at Payhip. Simply use the code FIFTY when prompted to get any of the following for half price:

The code is valid until the end of November 2015: share it on to anyone who you think would be interested. This is just one little way I can say thank you for all of the shares, RTs, emails, messages and other things that so many people have done for me and for the podcast over the last few years.

If you want to get in touch please email me, or find me on Twitter as @DrRyder or @VivaSurvivors. I love hearing from people who want to come on the podcast to share their PhD and viva experiences.

Here’s to the next fifty episodes! Thanks for reading 🙂

Nathan (@DrRyder and @VivaSurvivors)

Episode 25: Dr Nathan Ryder

No, that’s not a mistake in the title! For this episode I asked my good friend Dr David McGrogan (who you might remember from Episode 16) to interview me about my PhD and viva. I’ve mentioned bits and pieces about my doctoral experiences over the previous twenty-four episodes, but thought it might be interesting to talk about the viva as a whole. In the autumn it will be ten years since I started my PhD at the University of Liverpool, and so it seemed like a good sort of time to look back and reflect. I hope you find it interesting!

Just in case you don’t know, when I’m not doing the podcast I work freelance as a skills trainer in Higher Education, working primarily with postgraduate researchers all over the UK (and soon, the world!). In the last few years I’ve met close to a thousand PGRs on a workshop that I deliver called Viva Survivor, which was the inspiration for this podcast. In turn, that workshop inspired me to write Fail Your Viva, a book about viva preparation (despite the title!).

So that’s what I do in a nutshell! If you have any questions or comments about this or any other episode then please get in touch: comment on a post, email me or tweet away!

Thanks for listening,

Nathan (@DrRyder and @VivaSurvivors)