Daily viva help for PhDs
You’re not expected to simply remember everything in your viva. Photographic recall is not a requirement, and there are lots of useful reminders you can use: Use Post-it Notes to mark the start of chapters or important sections. Write a...
Be careful when you come to generalise your probable viva experience. Regulations, viva stories and hearing about vivas from your department all have a role to play in building up your personal expectations. Be sure you have enough suitable information...
It’s not the day you submit, or the day after. It’s not the first time you read your thesis after submission, or when you start to get ready for a mock viva. It isn’t even when you really start to...
It might take a lot of re-reading to remember something that you need to know. On the morning of my viva I knocked on my supervisor’s door to check the definition of something I had been using in my work for...
Whatever challenges you faced during your PhD, they helped you get to submission and to the viva. Whatever prep you do it will build on a solid foundation of knowledge and ability that you have developed. Whatever disruption you encountered...
A practice I return to again and again is to leave a note on my desk to help Future-Nathan get started when they sit down for work. It’s a kindness, a little thing to help me get going. I could...
How much preparation do I need to do? Not too much. How long will the viva be? Not too long. How tough will the questions be? Not too tough. How critical will my examiners be? Not too critical. How often...
There are many causes of doubt before the viva. One possibility is that a candidate believes some aspect of their research or thesis isn’t good enough. They find a weakness and then can do nothing but dwell on it. If...
You might have to take a step back when writing up to really ask yourself, “What else does this need?” You might have to take a step back from your thesis at submission, to give yourself space to reflect before...
It’s what you must have done over the course of your PhD. Your research and thesis must have a significant, original contribution – or, more simply, you must have made a difference. Something now exists that didn’t before and that...