Yesterday
If you’ve already submitted your thesis, then yesterday was the best time to start preparing for your viva. The next best time is today. But start small. You don’t have to do a lot today. Spend five minutes. Gather together...
Daily viva help for PhDs
If you’ve already submitted your thesis, then yesterday was the best time to start preparing for your viva. The next best time is today. But start small. You don’t have to do a lot today. Spend five minutes. Gather together...
I’ve got a lot of help from remembering the Plan, Do, Reflect, Review cycle for projects and work over the last decade or so. I like to think of it simply as: Make a plan, do the work, reflect on...
A good hour of viva preparation is like a short stack of profiteroles. What? What are you talking about? Consider a profiterole. A little globe of choux pastry, a delicious cream centre and a set chocolate top. Take a few...
Turn up at 8:30, start work by 9, check the list to see what edits need doing, start work, check every half hour or so that I’ve saved and the new pdf works, break at 11, back to work, lunch...
On this blog and in my workshops I share a lot of viva prep ideas. No-one needs to follow all of my suggestions: my hope is that the ideas I share spark a path forward. The danger, sometimes, on being...
It can feel like a great pressure has been taken away when you submit your thesis… …only to be replaced by the pressure of the viva and preparation. Some candidates will feel it more than others, particularly if they’re juggling...
There’s several strands running through how prepared a candidate could feel for the viva. You might know your thesis back-to-front, but be worried about answering questions. You could feel shaky on what vivas are actually like, but feel certain that...
I’m a big fan of Tim Ferriss: he’s written interesting, thought-provoking books and interviewed hundreds of people at the top of their fields in his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show. My wife got me his latest book, Tribe Of Mentors,...
Procrastination is a permanent hot topic in PhD circles. If you suffer with it, it might not go away when you submit. You can still procrastinate about prep, about thinking about the viva, about jobs and everything else that comes...