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Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2023: The Others!

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Last week, between Christmas and New Year, I shared posts that collected some of my favourite writing on the blog from 2023. I like to round out the year like this but it’s hard to narrow down the lists of posts because there are so many that I’m fond of!

I shared posts on viva prep, surviving and confidence, but there were more posts I’m really proud of that didn’t neatly fit into one category or other. Rather than have them disappear into the ether of the Viva Survivors archive, here are five more of my favourite posts of 2023:

  • Putting In The Hours – a very personal piece, reflecting on my memories of my dad.
  • Surprising Questions From Candidates – surprising, not stupid! There are no stupid questions about the viva, viva prep and expectations 🙂
  • It Depends – Many questions about the viva have a response that starts with these two words!
  • My Atypical Viva – I remember lots of the little, weird details about my viva. It wasn’t like many others I’ve heard of – and at the same time it wasn’t so different either.
  • Was That It? – a little reflection on the day I submitted my final thesis.

Hope you find these five interesting or helpful!

Nathan

Lists Leverage Lots

Daily Post

I love starting something with a list. There are lots of lists that can help with getting ready for the viva:

  • A list of key references in your bibliography.
  • A list of important results from your thesis.
  • A list of questions you anticipate at your viva.
  • A list of things to do as part of viva prep.
  • A list of annotations you could add to your thesis.
  • A list of people who could help you get ready.
  • A list of questions to ask your supervisor.
  • A list of typos that you find while reading before your viva.
  • And an incomplete list of possible lists that you may write as part of your viva prep!!!

You start something with a list. A list can focus or highlight, but it’s not the real work.

Any of the lists above and any others you might write could lead you to action or summarise information. So once you have a list related to your viva or prep, ask yourself what you need to do next.

Then do it.

Nathan

The Best Of The Best Of Viva Survivors 2022

Daily Post

At the end of December I shared five days of posts recapping my favourite writing from 2022. In case you missed that or you’re looking for some helpful highlights, here’s the best of those five days, with links to each round-up post!

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Viva Prep – I was very happy to reshare lots of help connected with viva prep, but especially A Helpful Acronym, one of the best little ideas related to viva help I’ve had!

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Reflections – I like having the space with this blog to do things a little different sometimes. The Red Button is certainly different, but hopefully contains a point well worth considering before the viva.

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Short Posts – Making A Difference is a helpful reminder!

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Confidence – Last year I worked with almost 1000 postgraduate researchers in viva-related sessions. Daily Confidence was inspired by something written in the chat at one of those sessions, a point that I’ve been thinking about a lot.

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Surviving – The definition of survive is manage to keep going in difficult circumstances. It’s only natural then that at some point I would write a post called Keep Going, so that I could dig into that idea a little more.

Following that last theme, in May 2022 I published a book containing the best of the first five years of the Viva Survivors daily blog: Keep Going: A Viva Survivors Anthology.

There are many posts I could highlight from the last year of Viva Survivors, but if you’re more future-focussed then subscribe and get a new piece of viva help in your inbox every day 🙂

Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Surviving

Daily Post

Well done! If you’re reading this you did it. You made it through another tough year. You survived 2022. Was it more challenging than previous years for you? How are you coping? And how ready are you for 2023?

2022 was the year I finally got COVID (thankfully not too serious and thankfully long recovered now). 2022 was the year I celebrated five years of publishing this blog. I shared another post marking how different life has become. And 2022 was another year where I continued to share thoughts on surviving on this blog, because I think it helps with the context of the viva and what someone has to do to succeed.

  • Verbs For The Viva – words matter, so it helps to keep the right ones in mind.
  • Not To Plan – an encouragement about what the last few years might mean…
  • Disrupted & Different – …and some more thoughts about preparing for a pandemic-influenced viva.
  • One More Time – that’s what the viva is, one more time after many times before.
  • Keep Going – two words that are worth exploring.

Another year. Again, well done.

Tomorrow we start a new one. You know what you need to do. You can decide how you will do it. Keep focussed on why you’re doing it and you’ll get there.

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

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Confidence

Daily Post

Years of work, weeks of prep and then… How will you feel at your viva?

Feeling nervous isn’t wrong but it doesn’t feel right. It’s a recognition that something matters: your viva and the outcome matter a lot. What can you do to feel confident for your viva? That’s a big question that occupies a lot of my thinking for this blog and for the work I do in webinars. Here are some of my favourite thoughts on the topic for this year:

Confidence is a skill and a story, a journey and a target. It’s how you feel and how you act. There are lots of ways to frame it and lots of things you can do to grow it for yourself, particularly in advance of your viva.

Tomorrow we finish the review of the year with the topic of surviving.

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

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Short Posts

Daily Post

I very rarely set out to write a long post. Viva Survivors posts tend to be around 200 words, but sometimes they can be a lot shorter, as with these six posts on a range of topics:

And how about one more? Making A Difference – something you must do over the course of your PhD!

There are two more days of my review of 2022. Tomorrow we explore confidence and the day after we finish the year by looking at the topic of surviving.

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

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Reflections

Daily Post

We continue the review of the year today with some of my favourite reflections about the viva.

I like these sort of posts, though I don’t tend to write them every day. They often involve noticing something about the viva that is odd, or connecting something of the viva with something in the wider world. And sometimes, as with the first post on today’s list, they involve telling a story:

  • The Red Button – a little story with a big point.
  • Two Pictures – a post about communicating the picture of your research that you see, to someone who can’t see what you see.
  • Map, Compass, Landmarks – a little reflection on how we think about what to expect for the viva.
  • The Same, But Different – contrasting in-person and video vivas.
  • Worry – where do you give your focus when you worry? How does that help?
  • Fuses & Feelings – thinking about what trips us up and what we can do about it.

Stop. Breathe. Think. Reflect. What’s standing out about your year? What do you notice about your PhD journey? And what does that mean?

Tomorrow: some of the shortest thoughts I’ve shared this year!

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

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

Ten 2-Minute Viva Prep Tasks

Daily Post

A simple post! Here’s a list of ten things you can do in two minutes or less that will make a difference to your viva preparations.

  1. Find and download the regulations for thesis examination for your university.
  2. Check and make a note of a member of staff you could contact – in your Graduate School or Doctoral College – in case you need help with arrangements for the viva.
  3. Gather together a suitable assortment of stationery to support annotating your thesis.
  4. Write and send a short email to three friends who could help you have a mini-viva.
  5. Find and bookmark the webpages of your examiners for later reading.
  6. Write a short email to your supervisor(s) asking about their availability in the coming weeks.
  7. Contact two or three people you know who have recently had a viva in your department and ask them a few questions about the experience.
  8. Write “YOU CAN DO THIS” at the top of the first page of your thesis.
  9. Stick a Post-it Note at the start of each chapter in your thesis to help you navigate it well.
  10. Write down one thing that you know is a valuable contribution in your research.

Viva prep takes time, but there are lots of little things that can make a big difference. Whenever you have a spare moment, think about what you can do to help yourself get ready.

 

Bonus 11th suggestion! Read this blog post about the book I published a few months ago! Ordering in print or ebook will also take less than two minutes and will help! 😉

Nathan

Six Half-Hours Of Prep

Daily Post

Thirty minutes is a meaningful block of time to move you closer to being ready for your viva. There’s lots you could do. Set a timer and then:

  1. Read your thesis. Focus on a particular section to help you think and remember, or just go gently through your big book of good stuff to help you remember the flow of your work.
  2. Bookmark important passages. Take a dozen Post-it Notes or sticky tabs and go exploring. Find the best bits and make them stand out.
  3. List ten important references. Capture the papers that have helped your work the most. Write down title, author, journal and year of publication – as well as a few sentences for why each reference has helped you.
  4. Explore your examiners. Check who they are. Check their interests and make notes. Check their recent papers and make notes. Look for common threads or ideas.
  5. Write a 1-paragraph summary of your research. Condense it down to a few sentences. Can you think of three keywords that you would have to use in any conversation to describe it?
  6. Zoom with a friend. Give them a 5-minute overview of your research, then ask them if they have questions.

Half an hour might not be long, but it’s enough to make a difference to how ready you are for your viva.

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