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Nathan

The Interesting Times Gang

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Has it really been three years? That’s when I shared Interesting Times, just before the first UK COVID lockdown. It was a strange time, and that strangeness seems to have been magnified and distorted as the last few years have unfolded. Since then we have had other global events, cost of living problems, social and political challenges and much more.

Two years ago I shared Still Interesting Times. Last year was Interesting Times Forever and I wondered if that might be the last time I made special note of the date, but I have at least this one more post in me.

 

The late and wonderful Iain M. Banks introduced The Interesting Times Gang in the novel Excession: the Gang are a group of super-artificial intelligences in a far future who convene when they encounter situations that are beyond even their remarkable abilities. They meet, they talk, they ask questions, they brainstorm and do the equivalent of whiteboarding any and every scenario they can think of. And then they get to work and do their best to meet that novel situation.

In the present day, interesting times are here to stay, and interesting times impact everything, big and small. So make sure you find your own interesting times gang – for your life and for your viva. As I’ve noted in the last few years of interesting times posts, everyone needs help. You might need help or you might be in a position to offer it.

Ask for help when you need it. Offer to help when you can.

For your viva you might need someone to listen, someone to share expectations, someone to help you get past anxieties or problems (real or imagined), someone to discuss your work with or someone to tell you that it’s going to be alright and why. And once you’ve had your viva, you can offer the same to others.

The last three years have been a lot. The next few years are bound to have some more of the same, at least sometimes. Rest when you can. Help when you can. Keep going, and remember that you have got as far as you have by being good, by growing, by learning and by being persistent at what you do.

Ask for help when you need it. Offer to help when you can.

Nathan

The Buffer

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I publish a blog post about the viva every day. To be sure that I meet that promise I write and polish posts far in advance. I like to make sure that I have several weeks completed at any time, acting as a sort of buffer, just in case something happens.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been very happy to have that buffer: on September 21st I tested positive for COVID for the first time. My case was mild, only two days of really feeling ill, then a long time of feeling drained after that. I was really glad to have my buffer of finished posts to give myself time off to recover. I didn’t worry that I was falling short of my goals.

As I write this though I have only a few days left and so really do have to get writing again!

 

Buffers are helpful in lots of ways and have lots of names. It could be a savings fund for emergencies, a pile of good books waiting to be read or a freezer full of home-cooked meals.

Practice and experience can be a kind of buffer too, building you up to be ready for future challenges. Early in my post-PhD life, a friend shared with me the value of regular practice: “Nathan, it gives you talent to burn.”

By the time you get to your viva you have invested a lot in your talent. You have a dragon’s hoard of knowledge, skill, ability and more. You don’t need to be concerned that you will fall short at the viva. You have a lot in your buffer – from years of experience – that you can bring to those few hours.

Nathan

Disrupted & Different

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We’re in our third year of the pandemic changing our lives. After all this time it’s reasonable to assume, at least for the next few years, that it’s a topic that might come up in the viva. Your examiners will expect that your PhD journey will have been impacted in some way; it may be useful for them to ask about this in the viva to explore and explain aspects of your research or thesis.

In preparation, perhaps consider the following three questions and make some notes to clear your head on the topic:

  • Why was your research disrupted by the pandemic?
  • How did this have an impact?
  • What changes did you need to make to your plans?

Reflecting and writing can help prepare for possible questions. It can lessen worries by helping you see that your work is not diminished, just different as a result.

Everyone’s daily life has changed over the last few years. We’ll feel the impacts for some time to come. But in preparation for the viva you can clarify things so that you can talk more easily to your examiners about how the pandemic changed your PhD.

Nathan

Interesting Times Forever

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It’s two years since my world changed, just before the first pandemic lockdown in the UK. Two years ago today I shared Interesting Times, thoughts on where I was and where I might be going in the weeks that would follow. A year ago, things had changed and were continuing to change, in ways that a year earlier I couldn’t have predicted. I wrote and shared Still Interesting Times.

And now it is 2022.

In the last year I’ve continued to work from home. I’ve been jabbed three times. I’ve seen my work and life continue to be impacted. I’ve avoided COVID but cared for my wife and daughter while they were poorly with it a few months ago. I’ve been fortunate to keep serving PhD candidates via their universities and sometimes through webinars I’ve set up myself. I’ve been fortunate to keep writing, keep helping and keep responding whenever anyone gets in touch.

 

What stands out to me when I think about the last two years?

Everyone needs help. Helping others helps us to grow too. So when you can: help. When I think about the viva it reminds me that there are lots of people who need help and lots of people who could help.

  • Candidates should reflect on their needs. What do you need to feel confident? What do you need to know to have a good picture of the viva?
  • Candidates should know they are not alone. Who can you turn to for support? Ask early and be honest. Work to get what you need from supervisors, colleagues, friends and family.
  • PhD graduates can help friends who are finishing. Can you tell your friends how much time you have for them and what you can offer to help? Can you tell your story to help set good expectations?
  • Supervisors should help set expectations with candidates about what is expected in the viva now. Supervisors can guide candidates past doubts and help them to focus on what really matters.
  • Graduate schools, doctoral colleges and doctoral training programmes can support PGRs by offering resources of all kinds that help to emphasise personal development. Share things and do things that help candidates feel stronger as a result.

I’m here too! This blog is updated every day, but you can email me or tweet me if you have questions. There’s almost five years of posts on the blog. There are over sixty viva stories in the podcast archive.

 

We live in “interesting” times. We always did, of course, but they’ve become even more interesting. More challenging. More surprising. Sometimes, more upsetting.

If you’re reading this though then, like me, you’re still here. Still learning. Still growing. Still making mistakes and persevering. So far, you have managed to keep going in difficult circumstances – and difficult might be an understatement in the last two years.

Get help if you need it, offer it to others if you can, but keep going.

Nathan

Change of Plans

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I’m thinking back to this time last year. In the UK there were various permissions extended to allow families and friends to meet over Christmastime-

-and then there weren’t.

Very quickly plans were changed, compromises were reached and make-do decisions were made.

That was hopefully just for one year. If you’ve had to make a similar change of plans for your PhD since March 2020 then that could have had a big and continuing impact on your PhD journey. Everything from a lack of access to equipment or materials and reduced meeting opportunities with your supervisors, all the way to a fundamental change of direction to your research.

It’s natural to be concerned about the questions that could be asked about this at the viva. It’s natural to worry. Not just common viva nervousness from anticipation of the event, but concern for communicating the practical changes and the impact – perhaps even wondering about what might have been.

It’s also natural to expect your examiners to be understanding about how the pandemic has had an impact on your PhD. They will know the changing situation of the last two years will have been difficult: in whatever way it comes up in the viva they will simply want you to be clear. Be clear about the impact. Be clear about how you changed your plans. Be clear about how you navigated the work despite the situation.

Be clear. They will understand.

Nathan

Hard Limits

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There are limits for everything related to your PhD journey.

There is a finite number of hours you could have spent on your PhD.

You can’t read everything that could be relevant. You would never have time to work towards your research in a practical way.

You can’t do everything that might advance your research goals. You would never have time to write up your thesis.

You have to make choices. You have to accept the limits, like them or not. You have to work within them, whether you want to or not. And, of course, the last eighteen months will have brought more limits.

Rather than rail against the limits and the maybes and the could-have-dones, reflect on how the limits of your PhD have had an impact. Explore the difficult limitations as you might have to talk about them in the viva. Remember that despite the limits – or in some cases, because of the limits – you have made it through.

Nathan

The Missing Things

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I used to travel a lot.

In a busy month I might spend upwards of forty or fifty hours in transit, shuttling between cities in the UK by train, going the final mile or two on foot or in a taxi. Thinking about it, I would stay in two or three cities a month. I would make small talk in hotel restaurants, secrete myself away in the corner of a coffeeshop for a hurried panini, and indulge in reading spy novels or occasionally plot out mad schemes for writing projects and new workshop ideas.

I don’t do any of these things any more.

Life changed. There’s now some of these things I can’t do, some I won’t do and some which I want to do but struggle to include in the new shape of my world.

I don’t miss the travel. I don’t miss being away. I don’t miss the hurried pace.

But I miss the space. I miss the difference and the variety. I am incredibly fortunate, all things considered. But there are still things that I would do differently now. It’s taken me almost sixteen months to realise that I have to make any changes that are going to give me the things that I need. To give me a cosy corner to think in, rather than just a desk to work at. To provide an hour here and there to relax and read, rather than just spend more time working. I am fortunate that I can explore how to make these changes and make them a reality.

 

I can only imagine what changes the last year and a half has brought for you. We can only imagine what changes the next year or so might bring our way.

If there are things in your PhD life that are missing and if your viva is coming soon, now might be the time to think about how you can bring those things back.

If you need space – different, bigger, better – then explore how you could make that happen.

If you need people – for feedback, for companionship, for learning – then ask the right people and see how you can make that happen.

If you need something, anything, you have to take the steps to get it.

 

Be clear about the need.

I don’t need to be on a train or in a cafe to read, write or think – I need a little space away from my desk to make my own.

Hence over the summer there is a corner of my office that is going to receive an armchair: a little corner to curl up in, read and dream.

What are you missing before your viva? What do you need? What will you do?

Nathan

Lockdown Limits

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In the last few months I’ve been asked the following many times at webinars: is it acceptable to tell my examiners that “lockdown(s) slowed me down when I was doing my research” if I’ve had to change my plans or not been able to accomplish as much as I wanted?

And my response would be, “Of course!”

If over the last year or so your work has had to change direction, or if you’ve had to do less in some way, then it’s fair for you to emphasise that. We live in exceptional times – your PhD has been completed in exceptional circumstances.

It’s fair to tell your examiners about the challenges you’ve faced in your viva. Beforehand, consider how you can best communicate that. How personal do you want to be? What details do you want to share? How can you communicate the paths that you would have taken? And how do you share what steered your choice in the new directions you had to go?

Nathan

Video Viva Expectations

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Last March I asked for examiners and PhD graduates to share their experiences of being part of a video viva. Lots of generous people shared their stories, observations and advice. A consistent detail – from the examiner perspective – was that video vivas tended to be shorter than in-person vivas. They were a little more formal, but due to the medium they were more focussed and completed more quickly.

As 2020 continued and became 2021, I heard more recent graduates describe their pandemic viva experiences. Long vivas over Zoom and Meet, three-and-a-half hours, four hours or more! The assumed explanation was that as no-one needed to travel to participate in the viva, examiners could give more time to the discussion in the viva. There was nothing negative seen in any of this – other than the amount of time spent in a video-meeting!

Are these long video vivas outliers? Possibly. Not every candidate shares their story, and of the handful I’ve heard there would be hundreds more I have no details of. It’s reasonable to expect that there would be differences in the viva over a video chat. Length of time is one aspect I could definitely see changing compared to the previously “typical” viva.

Some expectations remain true though. Examiners will be prepared. The candidate will be too. The viva is being done for the same reasons. The candidate has done the same work as if it was in-person. The outcome is likely to be the same, even if the process has changed.

In-person or over video, expect that you will have done everything you need to be ready to pass your viva.

Nathan

Disrupted

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There have always been candidates whose plans have been disrupted during their PhD journey. A project finds itself without the resources it needs. A plan loses support. Something just doesn’t work out the way it was expected. Every PhD candidate has faced little bumps and hiccups. In the thesis and at the viva, if they need to, the candidate can explain this usually very simply: why something was disrupted, how it had an impact, what the outcome was or what changes needed to be made.

But in the last year, every PhD candidate has faced disruption. It’s not a matter of if, but how much? Perhaps even how often? And so as submission or the viva approaches for Pandemic-PhDs, it’s not unexpected or unreasonable for candidates to be concerned about discussion around disruption. Perhaps in video vivas for the next few years it’s not a case of if examiners will ask about pandemic disruption, but when that line of questioning will start.

The response is still the same, more or less, even though it might be describing a much bigger disruption than candidates in years past. You can explore how you might make this response by reflecting in advance of the viva:

  • Why was your research disrupted?
  • How did it have an impact?
  • What was the outcome, or what changes did you make?

As with typical starter questions like “Can you summarise your research?” or “How did you get interested?” being asked about disruption due to the pandemic is a simple question to ask. It’s a natural, human question to ask. Your examiners aren’t testing you, they’re not trying to find ways that you should have done more. It’s a chance to reflect – and possibly an opportunity to show how your determination has helped you to get through.

“How was your research disrupted?” is a simple question, but for some it could also be a really difficult question to respond to. It’s sometimes too easy to sit at a distance and think about “disruption” in the abstract. For some candidates the last year may have been devastation rather than disruption. Reflect, prepare as best you can, be ready to share what you can in the viva.

Remember that whatever has happened in the last year you have managed to keep going. That counts for a lot.