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Nathan

Resolve

Daily Post

Don’t make big resolutions for this year. Don’t set impossible goals for yourself.

Don’t put that on yourself, particularly if you’re finishing your PhD and your viva will be between now and December 31st.

Instead, try one thing. Every day, when you’re fully awake, before you start your work or leisure, just ask yourself: “What can I do today to make tomorrow better?”

It can be tiny. It could be a one-off. It could be the start of a habit. It could be by yourself or involve others. It could be the start of an activity or finishing something.

“What can I do today to make tomorrow better?”

Then do it.

 

All the best for 2024 and my particular best wishes if you’re working towards your viva. What can you do in the coming weeks and months to make that day better?

Nathan

Setting Expectations

Daily Post

Happy New Year from Viva Survivors!

 

I’m often asked “What are vivas like?” I can help with that, as can a candidate’s friends and colleagues. No-one can guarantee what a viva will be like beforehand but there are enough stories that we can piece together expectations.

Vivas tend to be a certain length; they tend to start with these sorts of questions; vivas are structured, and so on.

That’s one kind of expectation. Another kind are the expectations you have for yourself at the viva.

You will be prepared. You will pause when you hear a question. You will take your time to respond. You will use every opportunity to share your research.

 

There there are the big picture expectations you set for yourself. What kind of researcher do you want to be? How are you going to get your PhD finished? And what kind of person do you want to be?

There are pros and cons for setting New Year’s Resolutions, but I think it’s a good idea to start a new year by setting expectations for oneself. What do you want to demonstrate and do as you go through the next 365 days? How could you do that? What kind of a difference are you trying to make?

Here’s to a good year, with very best wishes from me and my family to you and yours 🙂

Nathan

January Sale! (and Update)

Update

Happy New Year!

Let’s start with something fun 🙂 If you want to save yourself some money on viva preparation books then go check out Books right now! The Viva Prep Handbook is £2.49 delivered to your door and you can get that and Fail Your Viva for only £8.99. They’re on this special offer until my birthday on January 18th; do check them out!

2016 on the podcast micro-review!

Last year was a good one on the podcast. There were fewer visitors to the site but there were also fewer new episodes because of work and time commitments at my end. Despite that, there was a greater number of downloads and listens than 2015! So fewer people visiting, but people exploring a lot more of the archive, listening to stories of PhD research and viva experience. The number one episode of 2016 was Episode 59, where I chatted to @DrHelenKara about life as an independent researcher. Plus we talked about our book that we published in May, Self-Publishing For Academics!

Coming up in 2017!

I’m planning the schedule now and I’ll record new episodes soon. The first new episode will debut in February, and I’m looking for people who want to share their story in the next few months. One of the first episodes will be a second Q&A episode. I’ll write a post in the next few weeks to start getting your questions about the viva, the podcast and anything you want to know that I might be able to help with. If there are any questions in your head now then email or tweet at me!

Back to the Sale!

That’s nearly all for this post, but please do go and check out my January Sale of viva preparation books: the ultra-concise Viva Prep Handbook is £2.49 delivered! 3000 words of viva preparation help condensed down from six years of workshops that I’ve delivered all around the UK.

Plus you can get that bundled with Fail Your Viva for £8.99. Fail Your Viva first came out four years ago as an ebook in the Kindle Store. It has some pretty good reviews on the Kindle Store, but since Day 1 of the release I’ve had people asking about a print edition. Very happy to have helped people with that in the last year, and you can get it now bundled with The Viva Prep Handbook, delivered, for £8.99. All of these offers are only for the next two weeks, so get them at these prices while you can.

If your viva is coming up, check out the archive for stories of people who have been there and got it done. If you need some more help then either email me or check out one of my books or ebooks. And if you want to share your research journey and viva experiences then drop me a line and come on the podcast.

Nathan (@DrRyder and @VivaSurvivors)

Nathan

2014 on Viva Survivors

Update

Happy New Year!

Is it too late to say that? Maybe, but I mean it all the same – regardless of whether or not your viva is in 2014 I hope that everything goes exceptionally well for you in the twelve months. 2013 was a good year for me personally: my wife and I moved house, we had a daughter (CJ, now nearly four months old!), and I continued to be amazed by the opportunities that came my way and the interesting things that happened to me.

One thing that was less good was my commitment to the podcast. Shocking really, that this time last year I was planning to get the total number of podcasts up to 40 by the end of 2013. A massive over-estimation in terms of my time and energy (amazing what becoming a father will do for your free time). The last new episode was way back in June! Still, the podcast is not forgotten, I will just have to be a lot cleverer when it comes to carving out the time to interview people, but I’ll say more on that in a moment. (more…)

Nathan

Happy New Year!

Update

I hope that you all had a great Christmas and New Year!

2012 was a great year for the podcast.

I really enjoyed talking with all of my interviewees, and hearing about their experiences during their PhDs and vivas. It’s been wonderful to share these stories and to see the number of visitors to the site increasing month-on-month; thank you to everyone who has emailed or tweeted me to ask questions, share thoughts and volunteer to be part of the podcast. Your contributions are very welcome and much appreciated. It is really great to hear that people are finding something of value in the episodes.

So, 2013!

12 episodes in 2012, so 13 episodes in 2013? No way! My goal is for there to be at least 40 episodes in the archive by the end of the year – and for there to be more research areas, backgrounds and current roles represented too. I want this site and the podcast to grow into an even more valuable resource for postgraduate researchers. I’m planning to run special episodes a few times this year: the first will be about the academic job market and it should be up on the site (schedules permitting) within the next few weeks. I’m also hoping to record a special with people who have experience of being viva examiners.

If you’d like to be part of either of these special podcasts, have questions that you’d like answered in them or have ideas for future special podcasts then please get in touch, either email me, or tweet the @VivaSurvivors Twitter account! And if you would like to be part of a regular episode, sharing your PhD and viva experience, or if you have ideas for other features on the site, let me know – it would be great to hear from you!

Thank You

If you’ve been listening, thank you. If you’ve been tweeting/retweeting about the podcast, thank you. Thank you to all of the “Viva Survivors” who have shared their stories so far. Thanks in advance to everyone who comes on the podcast this year!

Nathan

PS – Episode 13 will be live on Monday morning (7th January 2013), featuring Dr Liz Walder (@WalderWit) talking about her research and viva!