Recognise Your Research
To get ready for your viva you, in part, have to recognise and accept that you’ve done good work over a long period of time. You have to look at your research and be able to say, “This is good...
Daily viva help for PhDs
To get ready for your viva you, in part, have to recognise and accept that you’ve done good work over a long period of time. You have to look at your research and be able to say, “This is good...
As you prepare for your viva, take an hour to think about how you have changed during your PhD journey. What can you do better now than when you started? What have you learned how to do? What methods, processes...
The viva is a single day when you have to rise to the occasion – but not the first day of the journey that you’re on. Your viva could be difficult. You can expect to be challenged, but that challenge...
The harder I work, the luckier I get. As with so many quotes it’s difficult to pin down who said it. Whoever said it they were definitely on to something. There’s such a thing as simple luck, but in many...
Personal development is sometimes seen as a box-ticking exercise during a PhD: perhaps a form or report that has to be filled in every now and then. That’s a shame, because I think personal development is what the PhD is...
Do you remember the first day of your PhD? Do you remember what that was like? I do! I can vividly remember showing up at my office, being told which of two desks I could commandeer for the next few...
You don’t have to work every hour of every day to prepare for your viva. You don’t have to be word perfect in your viva to succeed. You don’t have to be perfect. You can be you and that’s enough.
There are lots of questions you could be asked at your viva, including questions you’ve never been asked before! But by the time you get there you will have had lots of practise responding to questions, certainly enough to do...
If before your viva you feel an abundance of nervousness, then you have to look a little and find reasons to feel confident. Confidence doesn’t eliminate nerves, but it does help to put those sorts of feelings into perspective. Nervousness...
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,...