Daily viva help for PhDs
In preparing for the viva you get to choose what to focus on. You get to choose what to avoid. Make the choice consciously. The list of advice and practical points is long. It’s unlikely that you can do everything that people advise. You don’t need to do everything.
Listen to advice, but decide for yourself what’s relevant.
(and if your viva is a long way off, this is true for the PhD too)
More candidates tell me they’re nervous rather than excited about their viva. Many who tell me that they’re nervous wish they could feel confident or excited about the big day. Today, for the first time, I can reveal my four step plan to deal with viva nerves!
A process for anyone who is nervous about the viva:
…If only it were that easy. Nervous and excited are not binary states that you land in and stay in. One day you could wake up excited; two hours later you’re anxious and wondering, “What if…?”
Still, find steps that move you away from nervous and towards excited. Actions will help more than just thoughts. You can do more than hope you’re not too nervous.
You can’t expect your thesis to be perfect. Your examiners don’t expect it to be perfect. There might be typos or clumsy writing, something vague, but nothing too awful.
But what if there’s a flaw? What if there’s something which is just wrong? A hole in your logic perhaps, or maybe a result or reference that doesn’t support your argument. What then?
First, read your thesis carefully before the viva. Then you can be sure of what’s in there. If you find a flaw you can figure it out. You’ll know how to respond to comments about it in the viva. If you don’t find anything, then you’re probably fine.
If your examiners find something you didn’t, then talk it through with them. Ask questions to get as much information as possible. Think it through. Talk through each point in turn, make notes and see where your discussions lead you.
A flaw can be a tiny imperfection, not a big deal at all. No thesis is perfect. Not every problem is a problem.
How many times have you answered questions about your research?
How many times have you read a paper and increased your knowledge?
How often have you made a contribution to your field?
How many times have you had a discussion with someone about your work?
How many times have you checked your work?
How many times have you thought about your thesis and how best to write it?
So…
How likely is it that you will be faced with an unanswerable question in the viva? How likely is it that you will freeze or go blank? How likely is it that you’ll realise that something you did is fundamentally wrong? How likely is it that you’ll face one of the nightmare scenarios that people imagine and torture themselves with?
It’s not likely, right?
You did the work. Do the prep. Thrive in the viva.
It’s cool when you can summarise your research in a tweet. I loved the challenge of explaining my work so that a layperson could understand.
I explore ways to tell apart complicated knotted structures. For my PhD, I found several new processes and results using maths!
There might be some value in breaking down your chapters or key results into soundbites, as a reflective exercise. You could start off with 100 words to summarise a chapter, then try to do it in 25. Could you explain a chapter in ten words? You’d lose something, but it could help you to think through what’s important.
Just remember: this might help you to reflect on your work, but you’ll need more words to tell your research story to your examiners. You can’t predict all of their questions ahead of time, but you can be sure that they want more than a quip.
There are four elements of practical viva preparation, four key modes of activity to pay attention to:
None of them requires you to learn radically new skills. Investing time in these areas will be rewarded by your increased confidence as the viva comes around. There are lots of things that you can do in each of these areas:
You might not have done any of these things during your PhD, but you can do all of them. You only have to find expressions of the four elements to match your personal preferences: for example, not everyone will want a mock viva, but every candidate will benefit from practise through answering questions.
Find ways to think, read, write and talk that build confidence for your viva.
One way viva processes differ around the UK is in terms of awards. These are the various outcomes. Often people think in terms of corrections: no corrections, minor corrections and major corrections. If your viva is coming up I would encourage you to check exactly what each of these means at your institution.
Some universities give three months for minor corrections; others, only four weeks. At some institutions major corrections is an acknowledgement that your thesis is on track but you have some substantial editing or rewriting to do; at others, you must formally resubmit your thesis and have a second viva. Check the outcomes before you go to the viva. Better to know all of the possibilities…
…and then temper them with facts. Most people get minor corrections. It’s likely you will too. They won’t be terrible, but they’ll still be work that needs doing. Sketch a plan now. How long would you have to complete them? What would you have to do in order to complete them in that timeframe given everything else you have going on?
Be realistic. Prepare to pass and prepare for that final burst of work to make your best thesis.
I always tell people that reading their thesis is an essential part of viva prep, like it’s the easiest thing in the world – and I know that I struggled with it a lot! By the time I submitted I felt like I was burned out on my thesis. I felt confident, but was looking forward to when it would all be done. Here are ten tips for reading your thesis that should help with your viva preparations:
You have to read your thesis. It can feel like a chore at times, but it really is essential for the viva. Do everything you can to make the process work well for you.
Nearly every person that I’ve spoken to about mock vivas had theirs about two weeks before the actual viva. For them it was a chance to explore their thesis, get questions about their work and see how they would feel responding in a viva-like situation. Most people want something like that from the mock.
A while back I spoke to someone who had their mock viva a month before they submitted their thesis. They wanted to see how well they were communicating, both through their thesis and through the answers they gave to questions. Their early mock viva gave them a chance for “pre-corrections”: based on questions and feedback they tried to improve their thesis as much as possible before submission. That didn’t mean that they weren’t expecting corrections later but they were using their mock to make their thesis the best it could be.
I’ve never interviewed anyone else who has had such an early mock viva. It might not be a terrible idea to do something like it though. Why not host a seminar or have a series of conversations to unpick how well you’re communicating your research? What could you do to improve?
I have a hard time defining my job title. Sometimes I’m a freelance consultant, sometimes I’m a writer, sometimes I’m a skills trainer. I go back and forth on describing my Viva Survivor workshops as training. I share ideas and advice, explain what the viva is all about and help people to see that they have a lot of talents already. I want to help people feel as confident as possible for their viva. Some days I feel happy saying that the workshop is a skills training session, other days it doesn’t feel quite right.
Your institution probably provides a lot of training opportunities. They might book me to come in or provide their own sessions on viva prep, or they might not do something like that. Regardless of whether or not they provide viva training, look around for other sessions that could help you with finishing your PhD and preparing for the viva.
Look for workshops on presentation skills, confidence building, assertiveness – none of this is about the viva or viva prep, but all could help with it. Even if you’re three months from submission, if you feel it will help, see if there are any academic or thesis writing workshops. There will be valuable lessons you can learn from a half day session. The real value, of course, is when you make changes as a result.
See what’s on offer, see what you might learn and then think about the difference that could make.