Not A PhD
For over a decade Viva Survivors has been geared towards the PhD viva and helping people get ready, but PhD candidates aren’t the only postgraduate researchers who have a viva. What if you’re doing an EngD or an EdD? Or...
phd
Nice, But Not Necessary
As you finish up your thesis, take twenty minutes to make a list of all the things that didn’t quite make it. What did you not have time for? What did you not have enough resources to do? What didn’t...
Learning From Mistakes
Nevermind typos in my final thesis, I made far bigger mistakes throughout my PhD research… I spent days trying to solve a typesetting issue, before realising I was making a simple code error. I tried for weeks to organise a...
Your Questions
Your thesis has answers and ideas, but what were the questions that lead to them? And where did those questions come from? You’ll spend plenty of time in preparation for the viva reflecting on the whats and the hows of...
Limits
A PhD is all about limits. There’s a limit to how much you could do. There’s a limit to how many questions you could ask and answer. There’s a limit to how many papers you could read. There’s a limit...
The Extra Mile
During my PhD I didn’t have to extend my algorithm to consider the HOMFLY polynomial… …but I thought it was more useful than just writing it was possible in a discussion section. I didn’t have to produce tables of plait...
Hiatus
What happened? It’s been some time since I’ve posted a new episode, and I’m sorry to say that there might not be another before the end of 2016. Episode 63 came out a few days before we went on a...
Viva Survivor Workshop Update 1!
A week ago I announced my viva preparation workshop, Viva Survivor, which is taking place on June 29th in Manchester. I’ve been delivering these workshops in universities for six years, but this is the first time that I’ll be offering...
Q&A Episode Coming Soon
Hello! One of the few podcasts I regularly listen to is the Tim Ferriss Show: I highly recommend it, Tim interviews people about how they manage to be excellent in their fields. It’s a wild ride sometimes, and he has...
Calling all PhD Graduates!
The Viva Survivors Podcast is almost three years old! I can’t believe it personally, it seems like only yesterday that I was sat on my friend Shaine’s couch, hoping that the app I had downloaded was going to work fine...