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Tag: viva experiences

Nathan

Behind The Scenes

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I love movies. I sometimes go through periods where I watch a movie every day. A couple of hours of story, tension, excitement, wonder, hopefully interesting dialogue, emotions, and occasionally incredible special effects.

I love learning about the making of movies too: how were the actors cast? How did the script develop? Where did that cool idea come from? And how did they get that amazing shot to look so good? It’s rare that finding out these things breaks the magic for me. It’s possible, for me at least, to appreciate a movie and marvel at all of the hard work that went into it.

There’s a lot going on behind the scenes in the viva too, but it’s easy to forget that, easy to focus on just that one person on the day, hoping to pass. We have to remember…

  • …all of the hours spent by the candidates doing the work.
  • …all of the time spent organising thoughts and ideas into words on the page.
  • …all of the work invested by many others (supervisors, academics, universities) to get things to this point.
  • …the work of the examiners to get ready to give a good viva.
  • …the preparation work that a candidate can do to get ready and feel ready.

The viva is a couple of hours of dialogue, tension, excitement, maybe wonder, emotions – maybe few special effects, but it is certainly a special event! And it doesn’t just happen. There’s a lot that has to happen behind the scenes first.

Nathan

Predictions For The Future Of The Viva

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Virtual Vivas: Have your viva from the comfort of your home, while you can have the best external from ANYWHERE in the world!

AI Examiners: Profess0R V.Iva will read your thesis and optimise a set of question trees for discussion routines. Genetic algorithms will simulate instances of responses to produce a fair set of questions. And your viva will take place within three hours of submission of your thesis to the V.Iva Cloud!

The Honour System: “You did it? And it’s good? Fair enough then, here’s your certificate…”

Bonus Round: For every question you give a good answer to from the Super-Hard Questions List you get ten points! Get fifty or more and you could qualify to spin the Wheel Of Doctorateness and maybe win bonus doctoral endorsements!

Refreshments Will Be Provided: A water cooler and a hot water urn with several tea and coffee options. This would be nice if it was relatively common!

Predictions for change are tough. Predictions based on regular, common experiences are much more straight-forward. There are regulations for vivas in the UK. There are common patterns of experience. Within all the variety from what is essentially a unique exam every time we can see ideals to work towards, and so you can be prepared.

Who knows what the future will hold, in the short or long term? You can decide what you will do now.

Don’t wait for your viva future: work for it.

Nathan

YMMV

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Your mileage may vary.

That prep tip from a friend might not help you as much as it helped them.

The regulations might say to expect X, but you experience Y.

While others get a lot of help from a mock viva, you find it makes you worry.

But while your friends are nervous, you feel confident.

While someone else got minor corrections, you get none!

And the advice you heard didn’t just make a small difference, it made the difference to your viva.

Experiences vary. Preferences matter. Not everyone will have the same needs, the same circumstances, the same viva. We can hope for minimum standards, work hard towards preferred outcomes, and still some things won’t be quite as we might like. Some experiences will be better; some tips or techniques will be very helpful for some.

My advice is to share honestly, share openly, share positively. I hope it all helps, but your mileage may vary.

Nathan

Descriptions Are Relative

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Long viva, short viva. Good viva, bad viva.

Discussion or conversation? Chat or challenge?

Ready or prepared?

Words change how we feel about things.

Some people are tired by their viva, but I was exhausted.

Confident or nervous, nervous or anxious, anxious or worried, worried or terrified?

The descriptions for your viva are relative. A three hour or longer viva might feel intimidating now, a really stressful idea. Compare it to the thousands of hours of work you’ve done before. Compare it to how you might feel afterwards. Maybe, like some researchers, you’ll just think, “Was that it?”

Words really, really matter. Choose them carefully.

Nathan

Happy and Unhappy Vivas

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I’ve never read Anna Karenina. I get stuck about twenty pages in and change to something else on my Kindle. As I’ve read the start many times, the opening line remains with me, often translated as:

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

There’s a nice poetry in that statement, and I think it’s relevant to the viva too. In my decade of becoming fascinated by the viva, I hear more stories that mirror Tolstoy’s sentiment: I’ve heard of plenty of happy viva stories that sound quite similar. The few unhappy viva stories are memorable because they are distinct.

Happy vivas are happy because they go well. They’re the majority of vivas; there are general expectations being met; most candidates get minor corrections; most examiners approach their role in the right way; most candidates, even if they are nervous, realise it’s not an insurmountable task. They can prepare and they can continue to do well.

Unhappy vivas always have particular stories. The candidate who didn’t get on with their supervisor. The supervisor who didn’t do their job. The examiners who weren’t right. The regulations that weren’t followed. The candidate who felt rushed. The candidate who didn’t know what to expect. It only takes a few of these little details to make a viva thoroughly unhappy.

Don’t expect an unhappy viva. If you have concerns, do something as soon as possible. Don’t just let it go and hope for the best. Do something.

Do expect a happy viva. You’ve got this far for a reason. You’ve done the work. You are good at what you do. You are where you’re meant to be.

Nathan

Two Days After

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Being done is special, a real achievement. But the end of a PhD can feel quite abrupt.

So much time is spent building up. You build up your knowledge. You build up your ideas. You build up the picture of your work. You build a structure for your thesis. You build yourself up for submission, and then for the viva, and then…

…thousands and thousands of hours of work is weighed up in a few hundred minutes – if that!

The day of the viva might be happy, but it might be muted. The day after might find you still dazed. Was that it?

But I hope, at the latest, that two days after your viva, whenever it is, you could start to really feel that you’ve done something wonderful. Reach out to friends and family if it’s not sinking in. Finishing your PhD is a real achievement, even if you’re not feeling it immediately afterwards.

Nathan

Probably Not

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It’s the answer for many questions around the viva…

  • Will you remember everything?
  • Will you forget something important?
  • Will you go blank?
  • Will your examiners like everything?
  • Will they hate everything?
  • Will you demonstrate perfection?
  • Will you be cool, calm and collected?
  • Will your nerves get the best of you?
  • Would any of these things really make a difference on how things might go?

You don’t need to be perfect, and you don’t need to recall everything; you don’t need to fret over forgetting or going blank; you shouldn’t expect your examiners to rip your work to shreds and you can’t realistically expect that they won’t have questions or comments.

You can be ready. You can have realistic expectations. You can go prepared to meet any challenges.

Will you face another challenge like this in your life? Probably not.

But will this be the biggest thing you ever do? Probably not.

Nathan

Big Things I Learned At My Viva

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I find it helpful to look back on my viva now and then. A lot stands out to me that I wasn’t expecting at the time. As time goes by some realisations grow more important in my mind, so I thought today I’d share a few to think about for yours.

  • Comfortable clothes help a lot! You can look smart and be comfortable. You may want to dress to impress, but don’t wear shoes that are too tight or something that you find impossible to keep straight. Smart can be nice – but comfortable is what you need.
  • I was asked to give a presentation to start my viva. This was good for me. It forced key talking points and questions to be on my mind. Even if you’re not asked for a presentation (they’re not common) consider spending time thinking about what you would include. Or give a presentation for friends as part of your preparation for the viva.
  • I learned that vivas can be four hours long! Mine was. Yours could be, although it’s not very likely…
  • …which makes it all the more important that you ask other people about their experiences. You can’t predict your viva, but if you listen carefully to enough stories you can get a sense of what yours could be like.
  • Corrections aren’t a punishment. Examiners ask for them to try to help make your thesis better. I didn’t know that. I didn’t think my thesis would be perfect, but at the same time I hoped I wouldn’t be asked to make any changes. That’s unrealistic. As I later learned, most people are asked to do some kind of corrections. You probably will too.

A big learning point has only come with time and distance: my viva was important, my PhD was important and is important to me still – but neither of them are the most important things I’ll ever do. Take it seriously, of course, but you don’t need to obsess and worry.

And when you’re all done, take some time to reflect. What have you learned from your viva?

Nathan

Stories & Statistics

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Both have a place in shaping your expectations of the viva.

Stats can give you an outline, a pencil drawing that is a reasonable shape of the viva experience.

Stories can help to colour in that picture, give you details to help you see what vivas are like and how they feel.

Both have a place: your outline might vary a little, you might paint with different colours, but listening to stories and putting them together with the statistics for viva experiences should give you a useful blurry picture for your viva.

Squint and maybe you’ll see your future! Ask for advice, ask to hear about experiences, and then see how they make sense with where you are. No-one needs to go to their viva with a blank page for expectations.

Nathan

Exceptions To The Rule

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There are always some. For the viva think of them as exceptions to the expectations…

  • …the six hour vivas, out of the ordinary, but they do happen.
  • …the vivas done over video chat, which don’t happen that often, but often enough.
  • …the vivas where an examiner doesn’t have a PhD, or perhaps where there are two external examiners.
  • …the viva where the candidate is stood for four hours answering questions in front of a blackboard!

That last one was me. Totally unexpected, not unpleasant or terrible, just different. At the time I didn’t have either knowledge or experience to know it was out of the ordinary. I’ve never met anyone else who has stood for their whole viva.

There was a reason for why my viva happened that way: I was asked to give a presentation, and I stayed at the blackboard.

There are reasons for all of the exceptions; they don’t just happen, particular circumstances lead them that way. Not all exceptions to the rule can be seen in advance, but some – like the make-up of your examining group, or being asked to give a presentation, or doing the viva over videochat – can be. In all of those cases, there are rules and regulations for what happens.

Expectations for the exceptions.

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