viva expectations

Easy, Hard, Challenging

Don’t worry about whether or not your viva will be easy or hard. Who knows what you’ll feel like on the day, in the moment?

Prepare for a challenge. Two people have read your thesis and are ready to ask you all about it. This isn’t trivial, an elevator conversation or dinner party chit-chat. It’s there to explore what you’ve done, what you could have done and what all that means.

On the day you could find this easy or hard, but it will still be a challenge.

It’s still a challenge even if you are necessarily talented.

Time And The Viva

How long will the viva be? How long should it be? If it’s long – or short – is that bad?

There are norms – two to three hours is quite common – but you can’t know in advance. It could be less, it could be more. Many candidates, I think the majority, feel like their viva passes in the blink of an eye.

The length doesn’t indicate something good or bad. There’s no correlation between the length of the viva and the outcome.

A successful viva is not a function of how long it takes. The time isn’t as important as you are.

Serious

How serious do you need to be about your viva?

It’s an exam. You might think of it as the exam, but it’s still a test. People prepare for tests. They don’t, if they’re serious about them, just shrug their shoulders and say, “Oh well, que sera, sera!” But if they go too far the other way, think of it as life and death, then they get in the way of their preparations and their potential enjoyment.

You can look forward to it, people do. You can get ideas from the conversation, make new connections. You can do more than pass.

Your viva could be enjoyable!

So how serious do you need to be? Enough to motivate you to ask some questions – to reflect, to prepare, to think for yourself what you need – but not so much you treat it like a sign of the coming apocalypse.

A little serious then, not Serious.

Three Wishes

If you could have three wishes for your viva, what would they be?

I can imagine some possibilities…

  • …I wish that it wasn’t too long…
  • …I wish that my examiners would treat me fairly…
  • …I wish I could answer all of their questions…
  • …I wish I felt confident…
  • …I wish it was over!

Wishes don’t just manifest. Some parts of the viva you could have hope for, some things you can expect, and some things you can work towards making a reality. Rather than making wishes, find out realistic expectations for your viva – by asking people about theirs or talking to your university’s graduate school – and work on building up your confidence if you need to.

(unless you find a magic lamp, in which case wish away!)

Mismatched

Today marks five hundred daily posts for the blog(!), and so I wanted to pause and say something about what I see as the biggest, trickiest and most persistent problem surrounding the viva:

In general there is a great mismatch between the expectations and feelings of PhD candidates in advance of the viva, and the reality of the viva and the usual outcomes.

Most people worry in some way that they won’t pass, but most people pass the viva with no problems. I ask candidates in workshops how they feel about their viva. Over 80% say something like nervous, anxious, worried, unprepared, unsure and so on. Yet over 90% of candidates typically pass their viva with minor or no corrections.

Horror stories of incredibly long inquisitions, terrifying examiners with egos as big as buildings, complete railroad questions and total thesis rewrites permeate the space around vivas – and they don’t match the general reality of what happens in the viva and what happens as a result. Thousands have a viva in the UK every year. That’s a lot of people who invest time, energy and focus in being worried about a terrible thing that never happens.

What can be done?

We need to challenge the spread of misinformation, urban legends and negative experiences that surround the viva. We need to help candidates feel prepared for the reality of the viva, partly by making sure they have realistic expectations, partly by helping them see what could be useful to be practically ready.

Some ways forward, because this is a problem that everyone can chip away at:

  • Had a viva and it’s gone well? Find an avenue to share your experience. Write a blog post. Tell colleagues. Tweet about it.
  • Know someone who needs help? Help them! Don’t just say “you’ll be fine,” do something practical.
  • Share resources that help. There are lots of them out there. See what your university provides, see if it’s good, and pass it on.

Over time we can crack the Viva Mismatch Problem. It’s not intractable. We can get to a point where PhD candidates will expect that at the end of their research they are ready for the reality of the viva, not a nightmare, but a conversation – not torture, just talking.

As for me, I’m going to keep writing, keep making things, keep sharing what I do in workshops and sessions. If you think what I do is useful, then do think about subscribing to get the daily posts in your email. Tell someone about it if you think it will help them.

…500 posts! That’s a lot.

Onwards and upwards…

Omens

A red sky in the morning, a black cat, what your horoscope says, spilling salt or breaking a mirror…

…all could mean something bad will happen. If you believe. If you attach particular significance. Otherwise, they’re just events.

Similarly, examiners who are expert in your field, typos, unresolved problems in your research, unanswered questions from your data, and so on…

If you want them to be ominous, if you want them to be problems, then they will be. If they’re just facts or things, then maybe you can do something about them. You can look into something more, think about it more, do something and probably keep things that seem negative in some kind of perspective.

“Omens” are just events. It’s our interpretation that means something.

If your interpretation of your viva situation seems ominous, your next step is to think, “What can I do to change my perspective?”

Time Passes

It’s ten years since I finished my PhD and I’ve written several posts in the last few months referencing this. It’s like a little star whose gravity I can’t escape. I enjoyed my PhD, and have very few regrets or complaints about my time as a PGR, but I think one of the great differences to then and now is just how much support is available for researchers.

There are more visible sources in everything from skills development, professional help and support for the mental health challenges that some researchers can face. By no means have any of these areas been “solved” for PGRs, but the last decade has seen an explosion in approaches, resources, workshops, books, seminars, webinars and more importantly the culture around support for PGRs.

In the sphere of viva help, there are lots of resources, workshops and help out there (just like this site!) – but one of the key culture changes is the number of PhD graduates who write about their viva experiences now. This is completely different from my experience a decade ago. I knew no-one who shared what happened above and beyond a quick “I passed and it was fine!” person-to-person.

A long time ago I started the Elsewhere page on this site as a collection of useful resources beyond this site. There are a lot of stories on that page, but it’s while since I’ve updated the list. I don’t always have much time to go actively looking for more viva stories (but I’ll put an afternoon in the diary for the autumn to do an update). If you’ve written something, or know someone who has, then do drop me an email or a tweet with a link and I’ll add it to the page.

Stories matter. They help. The more we see stories of viva success, the more we can promote the idea that success is the norm, that fear and worry are based on the outliers. Stories change culture.

The Second Question

I love delivering my Viva Survivor session, partly because it helps people, partly because I get to try new things and develop the session more every time, and partly because I’m always kept on my toes by questions from participants. Just before the summer someone asked me, “What’s the second question likely to be in the viva?”

It really made me think. What could I say as a useful answer? I can’t predict the second question, of course, no-one can, but I don’t think the person asking it thought that I could. So what might they be looking for? What might they need?

I said something like this:

It might be could you say more about your contribution? or who do you see your key influences as being? or that’s interesting, why do you say that?

It depends on the first question, the first answer, the thoughts and opinions of your examiners and a lot of other factors.

You can’t control all of these factors, and you can’t know what your first answer is until you experience your first question and then talk.

But whatever your second (or first or fifteenth) question is, remember that you’re well-placed to give a good answer.

You didn’t just appear in the viva. And it’s not just any viva: it’s your viva. You did the thinking. You did the work. You wrote the thesis.

You can answer the second (or first or fifteenth) question.

Three Challenges

Three challenges for the PhD candidate.

First Challenge: believing that you don’t need to have a photographic memory about everything connected with your research and your thesis. Your examiners don’t expect you to know every possible thing. They expect you to have done the work, done some prep and be a talented researcher in your field. You can show them this.

Second Challenge: recognising that the viva is not the hardest thing you will ever do, and not even the hardest thing you will do as part of your PhD. It’s a couple of hours, talking with experts about your work, and it matters, of course – but so does the thousands of hours of work that’s gone into producing your thesis.

Third Challenge: accepting that the viva, in most cases, is a reasonably enjoyable experience. Some vivas are tougher than others, with more difficult circumstances. It doesn’t follow that yours will be.

Notice that none of these challenges are faced in the viva exactly, but in the expectations for it. Rise to meet them and the viva itself will seem less worrying.