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Nathan

Viva Survivors Select 01

Links, Update

I am thrilled to announce my new ongoing publication for PhD candidates: Viva Survivors Select!

This is my new curated series of zines. Every issue will contain a themed collection of posts from the blog’s archive plus a few new pieces of writing. I plan to release a new pdf issue each month and use this project to help postgraduate researchers by sharing my writing about the viva.

Front cover of Viva Survivors Select 01. In the background is a series of blueprint diagrams for electronic devices. Images are pitched at an angle. In the foreground are two text boxes, one approximately in the centre of the image, one at the bottom. Box in the middle, centred text has three lines: Viva Survivors Select 01 The Prototype Issue April 2025 Text box at the bottom: Nathan Ryder

The first issue is my prototype issue and features Viva Survivors posts from 2017. The eighth anniversary of the daily blog is on 18th April so this seemed like a great reason to go back to my early posts and look for the best writing to share.

In Viva Survivors Select 01 you’ll find the post below and nineteen more on the viva, viva prep and building confidence. I’ve also written an exploration of a very helpful viva prep tool and a short essay on writing. The zine has colour covers, public domain art and a lot of help for PhD candidates in a small pdf package.Page 8 from the first issue of "Viva Survivors Select". The top half of the page is taken up by a blog post; the bottom half has a simple line drawing of a filament lightbulb. Title: Lightbulb I don't know that it's universal, but the lightbulb is a powerful symbol for making a connection. One second you don't know something important, the next you do. I remember being sat on a train in early 2005, less than six months into my PhD. I was waiting to go and visit a friend. Just as the train doors were closing something CLICKED in my head and I could see the answer to a problem. It was just a little one but one at the root of a bigger problem in my thesis. Just like that, it came to me. And while there was a lot more work to do, this one little insight allowed me to write three chapters of my thesis. There were harder problems in my PhD, but this is the time I remember when something just came to me. Weeks of reading, of doodling and noodling, and then CLICK. When you have a real lightbulb moment, be grateful. What else are you grateful for in your PhD?


If you like the Viva Survivors daily blog and want something with a little more viva help then please take a look at Viva Survivors Select and see if it might be helpful for you.

If you like the Viva Survivors daily blog and want to support what I do in a practical way then please take a look at Viva Survivors Select and consider buying a copy.

And of course, if you know someone else who could use a little viva help then do tell them about Viva Survivors Select.

Thank you for reading, do get in touch if you have any questions – and look out for Viva Survivors Select 02, which will be released in mid-May!

Nathan

72 Hours To Go

Event, Update

In three days I’m sharing my Viva Survivor webinar live on Zoom. I do this regularly for universities and doctoral training programmes around the UK, but this is only the second time that I’m offering the session with an open registration. After the first time I got some lovely feedback in the days after:

“The session last week was so, so helpful. I really appreciated the practical guidance, which made so much sense and feels do-able and will help my confidence going into the viva. It helped that your manner in the training was calm, clear, concise, and full of empathy and understanding.”

UCLAN PhD Candidate, December 2024

 

Viva Survivor is my attempt to help PhD candidates feel like they are going to be OK at the viva. Afterwards a person will know:

  • what to expect – and what to focus on;
  • what they need to do – and know that they can do it;
  • how to engage at the viva – and know they will do it!
  • how to build confidence – and how to get started on that.

A 3-hour live webinar, a full and helpful session, plenty of time for questions, follow-up resources and a catch-up recording in case you can’t stay for the full time.

Registration for Viva Survivor is open for the next few days and the session starts at 10am, this Thursday 27th March. If you’re looking for help please do take a look – and if you know someone who might be interested do please pass this news on.

Thank you for reading 🙂

Nathan

Viva Survivor, Thursday 27th March 2025

Event, Update

Every day I share at least one helpful thought through the Viva Survivors blog. There’s a lot in the archives but it could take a long time to put together a full picture of what to expect and what to do by reading the last 2800 posts.

If you want a good idea of what to expect, what to do, how to get ready and how to build confidence then take a look at my upcoming Viva Survivor session on Thursday 27th March 2025. For three hours I’ll be sharing what vivas are really like, what effective viva preparation can look like and how someone can engage well with their examiners.

For three hours on Zoom you’ll get direct help from me through a live session that I have shared and developed with thousands of PhD candidates over the last fifteen years. I have a full plan, plenty of time to take questions from attendees, great follow-up resources and a catch-up recording in case anyone can’t stay for the whole time.

I love doing this session (I’ve delivered it almost 400 times!) and I hope that you’ll take a look at the registration page if you are looking for viva help. If you have any questions please get in touch – and do please pass on information of the session to anyone who might be looking for viva help.

One last time: Viva Survivor session on Thursday 27th March 2025!

Thanks for reading 🙂

Nathan

Viva Help in 2025

Event, Update

“The session last week was so, so helpful. I really appreciated the practical guidance, which made so much sense and feels do-able and will help my confidence going into the viva. It helped that your manner in the training was calm, clear, concise, and full of empathy and understanding.”

I received these kind words in my inbox in mid-December, from a participant of my first independent Viva Survivor session. It was a really nice early Christmas present!

Viva Survivor is a 3-hour session I’ve now delivered to more than 7500 postgraduate researchers. Through it I help PhD candidates see that being ready for the viva is within their reach. They’ve done the work, they can learn what to expect and what to do and generally find confidence for the viva day.

I’m typically invited by universities and doctoral training programmes to share Viva Survivor with their researchers, but I decided to offer it up for open registration in December. One day, one time, any PhD candidate welcome to register. A 3-hour live session with follow-up supporting materials and a catch-up recording.

Would anyone be interested?

Thankfully yes! In fact, seven PhD candidates attended. There was a lovely atmosphere created by my cohort. It also felt good to write to people individually before and after the session. It might be impractical for university sessions, but I’d love to do more to recreate this in the future.

 

“Just a quick note to say I passed my viva with minor corrections! Your webinar was very useful and definitely helped to allay some anxiety regarding the whole process.”

My second early Christmas present was the above message: one of my attendees at the independent session had their viva within weeks of Viva Survivor and had succeeded! As you might imagine, it felt fantastic to have played a part in helping them get ready.

I want to help many more people in 2025. I’m happy to say that I have a lot of dates in my diary with universities over the coming months, including my 400th Viva Survivor – and I’m very happy to announce that registration is open now for independent Viva Survivor sessions on March 27th 2025 and June 25th 2025!

These are months away, but if your viva is this year do take a look at what I’ll be covering and what you get by registering and attending. If you have questions about the session or format then please email me. I’ll be happy to respond.

And if you know someone who might be interested in Viva Survivor please pass the details on!

Thank you for reading 🙂

Nathan

Nathan

Suggestions, Not Solutions

Daily Post

If someone says do X to help with your viva problem Y…

  • …you shouldn’t do X if you’re not confident it’s a good idea.
  • …you shouldn’t do X if you don’t think it will meet your needs.
  • …you shouldn’t do X if your problem was Z rather than Y!
  • …you shouldn’t do nothing either if X seems like it won’t meet your needs.

Advice isn’t an order. Advice is an option. Assuming that anyone you look to for help is offering it with good intentions, ideas are still suggestions: they are not definite solutions to a problem.

Getting ready for the viva can be a stressful time for many reasons. Don’t let suggestions that aren’t suitable add to that.

If you can, be precise when making requests for help; if you receive suggestions that aren’t solutions to your situation then you have to decide on the next step.

Do you adapt the advice? Do you continue exploring options with the person who made the suggestion? Or do you look elsewhere?

 

PS: I’ll be offering a lot of helpful suggestions at Viva Survivor, my live webinar on Thursday 5th December 2024. I’ve delivered it for university groups for over a decade – to more than 7000 PhD candidates – and this is my first independent webinar. Do take a look and see if it might be a help – just a suggestion of course! 🙂

Nathan

Two Dates

Event, Update

I am very happy to share two upcoming dates that will be of interest to Viva Survivors readers.

 

Next Thursday, October 24th 2024, I’m sharing my Final Year Focus session live on Zoom. I’m asked to deliver this many times over the course of a year by various universities in the UK but I haven’t run an independent session of it for a while.

Final Year Focus is a 1-hour webinar for any PhD candidate working towards submission. How do you take control of the massive amount of work to do in your final year? What can you do to get to grips with the work that matters? These are the big questions I’ll be sharing my thoughts on next week.

Registration details are here on Eventbrite: I’ll be recording Final Year Focus too so if you can’t make it next Thursday 24th October 2024 you’ll be able to catch up for four weeks afterwards!

 

Even more exciting: registration is now open for Viva Survivor on Thursday 5th December 2024.

Quite simply, without Viva Survivor there would be no Viva Survivors blog! Viva Survivor is a 3-hour session that I have now delivered more than 375 times, both in-person and online, for over 7000 PhD candidates.

I’ve had the very good fortune to develop and deliver this session so many times over the last decade and Thursday 5th December 2024 is the first time I have ever offered it as an independent webinar.

What do you need to do to get ready for your viva? What can you expect from your examiners? How can you build confidence for the viva? I’ll respond to these questions and many more at Viva Survivor. There will also be a four-week catch-up recording, helpful handouts and a couple of special surprises along the way.

I’m really very excited to host this session with an open registration for the first time. Information about Viva Survivor and registration are all on this page on Eventbrite. The session itself will be live on Zoom on Thursday 5th December 2024.

 

If either of these upcoming sessions seem helpful to you then I hope you register and can join me for them. If you know someone who would benefit then please do share the link. And if you have any questions about either of the sessions then please do get in touch.

Thank you for reading 🙂

Nathan

Nathan

Advice = Options

Daily Post

If you’re finishing your PhD then you will know a lot of people who have advice for you (sometimes whether you want it or not).

Friends, colleagues, supervisors, researcher-development staff, random internet people with their daily blogs… How do you decide who to listen to and what to do, particularly when it’s for something as important as getting ready for your viva?

First, consider the source: do they have experience, knowledge or understanding of what they’re talking about? Or are they just repeating what they’ve heard on the grapevine?

Second, consider the context: is the advice specific or vague? Did you ask for it or was it just offered? Does it meet your needs?

Third, consider your situation: can you put this advice into practice? Do you feel that it will be of benefit?

Let’s be charitable and say that any advice you’re offered is, in some way, well-intentioned.

Advice gives you options: it gives ready-made ideas for what you could do, but you might need something different. You don’t have to accept it. You can say thank you but leave it to one side. You could be inspired to do your own thing and make your own option.

Ask for advice, listen to advice but make sure the option you take fits your needs and circumstances.

Nathan

Help If You Can

Daily Post

If a friend or colleague asks for help with their viva prep then assist them if you can. Ask what they need and help with their request as much as you’re able.

Perhaps they need to know what to expect from a viva. Share your experience or share what you’ve heard from trusted sources. Point them in the right direction for more help.

If they ask you to listen or to ask them questions then try to be there for them. Do this regardless of whether you’ve had a viva. When you’re asked to listen or discuss, help flows both ways. You learn while you offer support: the experience you get being in conversation helps you too.

There are valid reasons to say no to helping – you are busy or you really feel like you’re not the right person – but if you can, help your friends when they need someone.

Nathan

The Viva Help Parcel

Update

Viva Survivors has almost 2500 posts of viva help. There’s also the old podcast archive, resources and more. If you need viva help there is a lot of it freely available on this site! I’ve created a few publications too:

  • Keep Going – A Viva Survivors Anthology was first published in May 2022 and is my first big collection of Viva Survivors posts, the best of five years of the daily blog.
  • 101 Steps To A Great Viva is the zine that I Kickstarted last summer. Surprisingly it has 101 steps to a great viva! 101 practical steps any candidate can take to help get ready for their viva.

Following a few recent requests I’ve made my last print copies of both Keep Going – A Viva Survivors Anthology and 101 Steps To A Great Viva available for sale as a bundle that I’ll send to your letterbox 🙂

Front cover of "Keep Going - A Viva Survivors Anthology" by Nathan Ryder. Shows five postgraduate researchers sat around a table doing various research-related tasks. Cover by Maria Stoian

If you want print copies of these two helpful viva publications then go to this link – Viva Help Parcel – and look at the images and description to see if they might be for you. I suppose the questions to consider are:

  • Do you want a book of 150+ blog posts from the Viva Survivors blog?
  • Do you want a zine with 101 practical actions to help your viva?
  • And do you want both of these sent to you through the post?

If you answer yes to any of these then please check out the Viva Help Parcel, available with UK shipping included for £20. There are very limited quantities available and I have no current plans to produce more. Thank you for reading!

Cover of 101 Steps To A Great Viva

And PS: If you’re looking for ebooks or pdfs then you can find those here! 🙂

Nathan

Address Your Concerns

Daily Post

If you have any worries or concerns about your viva then take steps to address them.

It sounds like really obvious advice, right?

But I talk to hundreds and hundreds of PhD candidates every year who are worried about their viva. They aren’t sure what to expect. They worry about technical aspects of their research. Some are afraid of meeting their examiners.

And for some reason they keep hold of those worries rather than take actions to work past them.

I love helping people, but for their own sake, I do wish for candidates to realise that they can find help or release worry sooner. Ask your supervisor. Check the regulations. Do something rather than hold on to worry.

If you have a worry about your viva, don’t let it fester. Don’t let it become something bigger than it needs to be. If you need to know something or you aren’t sure then take steps.

By all means ask for advice – ask me! – but take steps rather than just worry.

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