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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!

Nathan

Holding On

Daily Post

At the start of a new academic year I’m reminded of how much my life has changed over the last few years; while for the most part I am very happy with where I am now, I still remember vividly how sharp and how stark things have been at times.

Survive means manage to keep going in difficult circumstances – and while it doesn’t have to be dire to be difficult it helps to reflect a little and remember how you have made it through.

If you have survived this far that means you kept going. How? What did you do through your PhD to make it so far when things have been so tough? What have you learned about yourself? How did you adapt?

As your viva comes closer, whatever else you feel, remember that you persisted. Whatever bad times you’ve had, you held on, you made it through. You were determined, often enough, to get to the end. How did you hold on? And what you can do now to keep holding on until your viva is done?

Nathan

Out Now: Keep Going – A Viva Survivors Anthology

Links, Update

I’m thrilled to announce that Keep Going – A Viva Survivors Anthology is out today! I celebrated with my book launch party yesterday and am now very happy that the book is available to buy. What is it? Here’s a little snippet from the book blurb:

Keep Going collects posts about viva expectations, viva prep and examiners, as well as:

  • reflections on the PhD journey and confidence;
  • practical steps for getting ready for the viva;
  • thoughts on what it really means to survive the viva.

Over 150 posts from five years of writing, carefully curated and edited to be a valuable guide for every postgraduate researcher with a viva in their future.

I’ve been working on Keep Going for the last six months: curating the very best from nearly 1800 blog posts and five years of writing. The book is available now in three places, as an ebook and in print. Here are the links if you’re interested:

It’s been a great project to make this book for the last six months and a thrill to present it to you today.

I define the work I do as “helping PGRs become PhDs”. Keep Going – A Viva Survivors Anthology is made for that purpose. If you have a viva in your future this book will help you know how to be ready for it. If you know someone with their viva coming up then please pass on news of the book.

Thanks for reading!

Nathan

Nathan

Keep Going: The Launch Party

Event, Update


On Monday I shared a post about my new Viva Survivors anthology, Keep Going! The book will be available via the Amazon Kindle store and through my Payhip site from Thursday 26th May, but I’m now very excited to announce the lunchtime launch party I’m hosting on Wednesday 25th May 2022!

At 1pm I’ll host a space on Zoom to share and celebrate the launch. I’ll talk about the book, the blog, the viva and take questions from the audience: depending on numbers I may not be able to respond to every question on the day, but I’ll do my best. There’ll be one or two fun surprises as well!

And registration, at this Eventbrite link, is free! I’m delighted to throw the doors open and welcome you to share in my celebrations of five years of blogging and the book’s release. If you like you can also pre-order a copy of the ebook with your registration 🙂

Thanks for reading, do take a look at the event and share the link if you know someone working towards their viva now. I’m proud of the book that I’ve been bringing together for the last six months or so and am thrilled to share it soon!

Nathan

Keep Going – A Viva Survivors Anthology

Update

About a month ago the Viva Survivors blog celebrated five years of daily posts! With this milestone in mind I’ve been working on something a little special. I’m thrilled to announce Keep Going, a Viva Survivors anthology:

Keep Going is the best of the first five years of daily posts. I’ve found my favourites out of nearly 1800 posts: from reflections on the PhD journey to lists of questions, practical prep ideas to confidences boosts. I’ve curated, edited and polished an anthology to celebrate five years of writing – but more importantly to be a help to someone with the viva in their future.

I’m doing the very final checks and logistical arrangements now. The words have been checked and typeset. The post order has been finalised. The cover has been created by the wonderful Maria Stoian!

There’s a few more things to do but Keep Going will be available very soon!

How soon?

Keep Going will release on Thursday 26th May 2022, and will be available as an ebook in the Amazon Kindle store and also via Payhip (where I have my own little ebook shop). To celebrate a little more, I’m hosting a launch party on Zoom on Wednesday 25th May, but I’ll share details of that in the next few days.

I just couldn’t wait any more to tell people about what I’ve been working on for the last few months! Look out for more details in the next few days on Twitter and here 🙂

Thank you for reading!

Nathan

Nathan

All Right, Alright

Daily Post

You don’t need to answer every question. You don’t need to know every fact. You don’t need to have absorbed every detail about your examiners.

To be alright in the viva, you don’t need to get everything all right in advance of it. You don’t need to respond in the right way for every question. Of course, do your best! Of course, try and work hard! But if your mind goes blank, or your freeze, or you forget, you will still be alright.

You will have done enough before the viva and will do enough during the viva to pass.

You’ll be alright.

Nathan

One Way

Daily Post

There’s no single right way to select examiners. There’s no best criteria for deciding whether you should have you supervisor at your viva. I can think of many options for planning out and completing viva prep. I have a lot of suggestions for how someone might build their confidence before their viva – but I don’t know the best one to suggest to you offhand. And, of course, there are many different questions that can be asked at the viva, many approaches that your examiners can take, endless variety of situations on the day.

There are so many aspects of the viva that have lots of possibilities and yet, ultimately, there’s only one way you succeed: you do the research, grow as a researcher, write your thesis, submit it, then prepare for and pass your viva.

It’s the only way to get it done.

Nathan

Surviving

Daily Post

Survive means manage to keep going in difficult circumstances. In some ways I feel like this is quite a mundane definition, almost boring: it doesn’t capture the flavour of what people tend to think about survival. Over time we have skewed survive to only mean situations where life is threatened and nearly all hope is lost.

Survive implies, I think, a challenge that is being worked through. It feels like the best verb to describe the kind of challenge being overcome in the PhD viva: it’s not a new challenge, it’s not impossible, it’s not supposed to be a struggle. It applies to the PhD as well, of course, though the challenge is bigger, for longer and can take many forms.

Manage to keep going in difficult circumstances sometimes doesn’t capture the nuance of the difficulty or the challenge. It doesn’t account for how someone might feel about their PhD or viva. It’s still the best verb I can think of for describing how someone can engage with the circumstances of their viva.

Nathan

Rewarding Progress

Daily Post

If you need any extra motivation to get viva prep done, consider setting rewards for when you finish tasks. Big or small, rewards help spur people to action. What sort of rewards might help you? What sort of milestones in your prep could you aim for?

  • What could you do to reward a read-through of your thesis?
  • How will you celebrate when you have finished exploring your examiners’ recent publications?
  • And how could you bring a smile to your face after completing a mock viva?

You could ask others to join you for some friendly social pressure, or set some future rewards by yourself. The fact that you set rewards for yourself will do nothing to dampen your enthusiasm, so long as the reward is suitably motivating!

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