lists

Summary Fundamentals

A summary is an answer to a question. For a postgraduate researcher with their viva in the future the question could be:

  • How can I describe this concisely?
  • How can I explain this to a novice?
  • How can I display this visually for myself?
  • How can I outline my thesis?
  • How can I arrange what I know to most help myself?
  • What’s the story of my research?
  • What are the essential facts of my thesis?
  • What does my thesis look like?
  • What matters most about my work?
  • What stands out about my research?
  • Why is this a valuable contribution?

There are many, many useful questions to help create summaries. And there are many ways that you can arrange or display the content of an answer to create a summary. The act of making a summary is a useful tool for viva preparation. If you ask a better question you can find a more valuable answer.

Reflect a little. What kinds of information formats help you? So what kinds of summaries could help you?

So what kinds of questions could help you?

Top Ten Top Fives

I often encourage people to use “top fives” to start a summary or reflection. Get a list of five going and you have something to build on. There’s a lot you can think about when you’re preparing for the viva, so here’s my top ten list of top five topics!

  1. Top Five Contributions To Your Field That You’ve Made!
  2. Top Five Papers That You’ve Referenced In Your Bibliography!
  3. Top Five Questions You Might Like To Ask Your Examiners In The Viva!
  4. Top Five Pages You Want To Find Easily In Your Thesis!
  5. Top Five Things You Really Need To Remember!
  6. Top Five Questions You Don’t Want To Be Asked By Your Examiners!
  7. Top Five People You Can Turn To For Help!
  8. Top Five Steps You Need To Do To Feel Prepared!
  9. Top Five Proudest Moments Of Your PhD!
  10. Top Five Things You Can Do To Be Confident On The Day!

Lists are fun. Structure helps. What makes your list(s)?

Why-How-What

If you’re looking for a way to share a summary of your research, as you might in the viva, think Why-How-What:

  • Why is your topic worth researching?
  • How have you gone about researching it?
  • What have you found?

Every time you give a summary of your work you get to try new ways to communicate what’s important. These questions are only the beginning, you might want to elaborate. You have to start somewhere though.

Five More

In workshops I ask people to come up with lists of five highlights in their thesis, or five important papers that they’ve used in their bibliography. For many this isn’t too tricky a task, three or four come quite easy and the fifth is the work of a moment to fill in the blank.

How about another five? Not as easy perhaps.

The top five come to mind easy because we’re human and we make patterns; chances are you’ve already got a bullet point list of highlights or important references. You’ve settled on your talking points.

It’s not enough to just make a lot of lists to prepare for the viva. Stretching yourself by making lists can be valuable. For the examples above, you can expand on what makes your thesis great, or dig deeper into the papers that helped build your work. You have to think to do this. Don’t settle for what always comes to mind. See how far you can go and what new connections you can make.