Daily viva help for PhDs
If your viva’s not coming up yet, or it’s in the past, find someone to help. If you know someone who has their viva soon, or someone who is finishing their PhD, ask them what they need. Don’t assume that you have all the answers or the right way to do something. Check what they need first. Then see if you can meet those needs. If you can’t, see if you can figure out what else might help.
If you don’t need help, what can you do to help someone?
Google around and you’ll find lots of articles about problems with making positive changes. People don’t eat well because they don’t buy good foods. People don’t exercise because they don’t have an environment around them that supports exercise. People don’t practise with a hobby because they keep their materials shut up, and so on.
One way to get around this is to get rid of friction in the situations: actually buy healthy stuff, use books as free weights, keep your paints or guitar out where they’re in reach. Organise yourself so that you free up time to do what you want. Then you can’t rationalise your way out of doing what you need.
What are the sources of friction in your viva prep environment?
Once you get rid of the friction you can get to work. Without these kinds of friction you’ll work better too.
For some time I’ve suggested that researchers make an edited bibliography as part of their viva prep. If you have 200 references, what are the 20 most important? Make a list and add a few details to each of them: which chapter they’re most important to, why, and so on.
Last month at a workshop in Leeds, a participant gave me a brilliant hack of this idea. Think about the main researchers you’ve included in your bibliography, or who are big names in your field. Make a list and write a couple of sentences for each to summarise their research or opinions. Creating the list helps you to think about your field, and afterwards you have a resource to refer to as you prepare for the viva.
I am a huge fan of role-playing games. I love everything about them, from playing them to running them, investigating how they work and the kinds of play that they can produce. I have a side project as a role-playing game publisher, although my ambitions to date have been quite modest.
Anyway! One of the things I like most about them is the opportunity they give people to pretend to be someone else. You’re no longer a mild-mannered skills trainer, you’re a warrior-wizard with strange powers and a thirst for revenge! For a few hours you can step back from the real world and be someone else, somewhere else.
An element of role-playing could be really useful before the viva too. A mock viva is a kind of role-play, but there are other opportunities.
Some people act when they role-play; others just think and imagine. Try it out for yourself. Reflect on what questions or ideas come up, and see how they can help you be ready for the viva.
How often did you reflect during your PhD? Here are nine questions to help with some end of PhD reflection. Write or record answers for them. Your examiners are unlikely to ask some of these, but perhaps you’ll find some new insights.
Come back to your answers after the viva. See if any of them have changed. If they have, why?
I record every question I get asked in workshops. The text document runs to over 15,000 words now. Over time I see trends and themes, and they help me to think about how I evolve the workshop.
In particular I see the worries of candidates collect in three groups:
I get lots of questions related to all these areas, and I think they’re arranged in a hierarchy. I think people are more worried about the second kind of worries than they are the first; I think they’re more worried about the third kind than the second. It makes a certain kind of sense. Research takes a long time to mature – you know everything you’ve done, everything you thought of doing, you learned from so many mistakes and successes. You know your research. Writing up took less time – however much you know about your research, there’s a chance that you’ve made a significant typo or forgotten something. You may have expressed something in a clumsy way. It’s not all that likely.
Whatever you did in your research and write-up though, you have no way of knowing exactly what your examiners will ask. There are lots of common questions, but your viva is a custom exam: you can’t predict every question or how you might respond.
Three common groups of worries, but some are more worrying than others. What do you do?
Feeling worried? That’s OK. Work your way past the worries.
What if you wanted to tell a friend about your research and you only had one sheet of paper? What would you put on this cheatsheet?
Would it have lots of pictures? Bullet-points? Would your abstract feature? And would it be black and white or full colour?
What would you leave out? What must you include? Do they need to know anything else in order to understand what you’re telling them?
Your friend would probably thank you, it’d be a neat insight into what you do.
If you do this, make two copies and keep one. You do valuable prep in creating the cheatsheet and then have a resource to refresh your memory later.
Bookmarks, Post Its and annotation in your thesis help you, but they’re also a signal. They tell your examiners you have prepared for the viva. You’ve read your thesis and clearly thought about it a lot since submission. At the start of the viva it says, “I’m ready.” By that point, if you’ve done the work, you are.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
I have an idea to write a parody of The Raven which is about the PhD or viva prep. The idea hasn’t fully come together in my mind.
As a starter, I like to imagine that the narrator is someone preparing for their viva. I can imagine that many researchers produce curious volumes! Towards the end they may be up late re-reading their thesis. Stressing over it perhaps – “weak and weary” – when someone knocks on their door.
Not a stranger, but a friend, offering to help. “What do you need?” That would be nice, right? You don’t have to do it all alone.
Of course you’re probably not sitting up at midnight hunched over your thesis, people (and ravens) probably don’t knock at your door that often after dark. So alternatively: go ask people for help. What would make the difference to you?
The last time I was terrified was watching Get Out. I’m not going to spoil it, and if you intend to see the movie I suggest you stay spoiler-free.
I saw it at a lunchtime screening. Afterwards I walked out of the cinema with my heart pounding. I spent the rest of the day on a big adrenaline high. I’m really serious: it took about ten hours for the terror to go away. It’s a great, scary movie with a compelling story that leaves you with a lot to think about.
Nathan, this blog is about the viva and viva prep, where are you going with this?
I ask in workshops how candidates feel about their viva. Worried. Nervous. Unsure. Excited.
Sometimes they tell me they’re terrified. When they do I can tell they mean it, it’s not an exaggeration. They are beyond scared. The thought of the viva makes them terribly afraid.
I don’t have an easy answer to this problem. If scary movies make you terrified, you can avoid them. If the viva makes you terrified, you still have to have one. I’m a huge fan of Seth Godin and this post from March is really helpful if you’re facing viva fear. The level of fear or terror we get in the modern world is disproportionate; we’re not being hunted by large predator animals, but we can still have strong fear responses. But as Seth says in the post: “As soon as we give it a name, though, as soon as we call it out, we can begin to move forward.”
That’s the not-easy answer: if you have viva-fear, figure out what it is that makes you afraid, and then you can start to change.
Scared of what the examiners think and how you’ll respond? Get feedback from others so you have practice.
Worried that you’ll forget everything? Read your thesis carefully and make some summaries for yourself.
Terrified that you’ll freeze when asked a question? Have a mock viva or get friends to ask questions.
Once you name your fear you can do something about it.