lists

20 Small Steps To A Better Viva

Your viva can’t be the best, but there are many steps you could take to make yours better.

  1. Proofread your thesis before submission.
  2. Read your institution’s thesis examination regulations.
  3. Take a break after submission.
  4. Put Post-it Notes in your thesis to mark the start of chapters.
  5. Do a little research on your examiners
  6. Plan how you will get to the viva on the day.
  7. Have a mock viva.
  8. Talk to PhD graduates about their viva experiences.
  9. Talk to your supervisors about the choice of examiners.
  10. Annotate your thesis.
  11. Read your thesis carefully at least once between submission and the viva.
  12. Take steps to boost and maintain your confidence.
  13. Reflect on your research contribution.
  14. Explore your bibliography a little.
  15. Re-read any sections of your thesis that are conceptually difficult or tricky to explain.
  16. Figure out why you’re stressed (if you are).
  17. Help your friends and family to understand what the viva is all about.
  18. Take a bottle of water to the viva.
  19. Remember how much work you’ve done to get this far.
  20. Plan how you will celebrate passing your viva.

How you feel in your viva is not down to luck. Do everything you can to make your viva better.

Little things add up.

7 Questions For Selecting Examiners

Need some help thinking of who could examine you? Start with these six questions to get a list of names:

  1. Whose work have you built on in a meaningful way?
  2. Who have you met at conferences?
  3. Who has a good reputation?
  4. Who is an expert in your field?
  5. Who have you cited a few times?
  6. Who do you think you can trust to do a good job?

With these six questions you can get a long or short list quite quickly. Then you have to figure out how you narrow it down so that you can have a chat with your supervisors.

A more useful question perhaps: what are you really looking for in an examiner?

Once you know the answer to this, you can have a more meaningful conversation with your supervisors about who might be a good choice.

Ten More Top Fives

Earlier this year I shared a list post, Top Ten Top Fives, that had ideas on how to get started with thinking about the viva and viva prep. A simple setup, prompts to get ideas flowing and start making notes.

Today seemed like a good chance to add some more prompts:

  1. Top Five Academics Who Would Be A Good External!
  2. Top Five Tips You’ve Heard For Viva Prep!
  3. Top Five Expectations For Viva Day!
  4. Top Five Questions You Think You’ll Be Asked!
  5. Top Five Help Requests You Can Make!
  6. Top Five Questions For Your Supervisor In Preparation!
  7. Top Five Challenges You Overcame In Your PhD!
  8. Top Five Annotations You’re Going To Make In Your Thesis!
  9. Top Five Unanswered Questions From Your Research!
  10. Top Five Things You’ll Do To Celebrate Passing Your Viva!

There’s inertia to overcome with thinking about different aspects of the viva. A little nudge, a good prompt, can get things moving.

Ten Questions For Pre-Viva Nerves

It’s understandable to be nervous, anxious or scared about the viva. It’s not just any other day of your PhD.

You can be nervous, and hope that it doesn’t affect you too much, or you can be nervous and think about what you can do to make things better. Here are ten questions to help you unpick and cope with pre-viva nerves:

  1. How nervous do you feel on a scale of one to ten?
  2. In what ways are your nerves getting in the way of your prep?
  3. What do you think lies at the root of your nerves?
  4. What could you do to make yourself feel one bit less nervous?
  5. What will you do?
  6. How many positive things can you think of to boost your confidence?
  7. What ones do you think you could try in the next seven days?
  8. What ones will you try?
  9. What are you feeling most anxious about the viva?
  10. What are you going to do about it?

“I’m nervous” or “I’m anxious” isn’t enough. You can’t stop there. You have to work past worry I think, not be stopped by whatever barriers are going up. It’s easy for me to just say that, but if you’re in that place you have to do something about it.

I hope these questions help. Take a look at the following tagged themes on the blog too – worry and viva anxiety – there may be something useful among these posts for you.

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.