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Tag: viva prep

Nathan

The Tunnel To Submission

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I live in the north-west of England and a few times per month we have cause to travel through one of the Mersey tunnels.

It’s gloomy in there no matter the time of day: the rear lights of cars, the not-daylight of the tunnel lights and the monotonous blurring of the walls.

Then you hit the end. Daylight reaches in-

-and you have less than ten seconds to be sure of which way you’re going! There are two exits and you need to be sure because there’s no turning back!

Veer left or right? Towards the stadia or the city? There are two lanes and it helps to get into the correct one before you enter. That way you’re on track for the whole journey.

 

Which brings us to the PhD journey, submission, viva prep and the viva.

The final weeks and months before submission can be a bit like the Kingsway Tunnel. You’re going forwards but it’s all a blur. You have to focus to get through but if you’re not careful you can reach the other side and not know where you’re going next.

Plan ahead. Decide on your route to being ready for your viva. When you get to submission do you need to take a break or keep on? Will you take your time or power ahead? You can decide how you make your way to the viva.

Sketch out a plan for your viva prep and don’t be surprised when that time arrives.

Nathan

What Does It Do?

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A four word question to help you think about your significant, original contribution.

Four words that might help you get thinking quickly. What, practically, does your work do? What do your results do for others? We can spin a web of questions and connections from those four words.

Start with the simple and work out. Reflect, write and talk.

Get ready to tell your examiners all about the value of your contribution.

Nathan

Small Prep

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Reading your thesis cover to cover might take hours. Reading a page might take a few minutes.

Having a mock viva will take several hours of prep and several hours on the day. Responding to a question from a friend might take five minutes.

Carefully reviewing your thesis for what to annotate will take time. Adding sticky notes to the start of each chapter will take two minutes at most.

 

All of which is to say that there’s a lot of big prep but many small tasks that will make a difference.

You can’t focus solely on the latter and hope it’s enough, but if you’re tired or overwhelmed you can give yourself some small easy wins to help you get back on track.

Use small bits of prep to help move you closer to being ready.

Nathan

Your Choices

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A big picture perspective on the viva could give three driving questions:

  • Why did you do it? (the topic of your research)
  • How did you do it? (methods and approaches)
  • What was the result? (findings, conclusions, etc)

Naturally there are many questions that could follow from each of these. There are unique questions for every PhD candidate because every candidate’s research, thesis and circumstances are unique. These three driving questions are a good starting point for reflection and all three are related to your choices.

  • It’s possible your research area was an open problem that was worth studying – but why did you do it?
  • It could be the case that there were multiple ways for someone to explore your topic – but why did you choose the approach you did?
  • Results can be open to interpretations sometimes – and if that’s true for your work why did you make the choices you did?

Choices are interesting and nearly always worth talking about or understanding. Reflect on your choices ahead of the viva.

Nathan

The Same Hours

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British Summer Time started today and all of the clocks changed. For today particularly we have to hurry because there’s an hour less to get things done! And for the next few days many of us will feel like something isn’t quite right with the time.

Despite the change it’s still the same hours ahead of us. They all have sixty minutes in them. Some we’ll sleep in, some we’ll be busy. Some will take a long time and some will fly by.

The clocks changed, but you still have the same hours between now and your viva. That one small jump forward doesn’t make a great difference. What you decide to do with the time is what could make a difference to your preparation – just the same as what you have already done has made a difference to the hours leading up to now.

So what will you do? How will make the most of the hours you’ve got before your viva?

Nathan

What I Did

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I remember reading my thesis a lot after submission. Without thinking about the purpose too much I remember adding a lot of notes to my thesis margins. I would circle or mark jargon terms that I had trouble with in the hope that I would be able to remember them at the viva. I stuck sticky notes at the start of chapters to help me navigate my thesis.

I had a weekly meeting with my supervisor throughout my PhD that we continued after I submitted my thesis. Each week we talked about one chapter in my thesis. I don’t recall a particular purpose, we weren’t exploring “What might an examiner ask?” – the conversation was more general than that.

I read a survey paper on a topic my external was interested in. My supervisor thought this would be helpful because my external would want me to explain whether my work could connect up with this hot topic area. My supervisor was 100% correct in this belief!

I prepared an overview presentation of my thesis because I was asked for that by my examiners; I knew that that was how my viva would start and so that gave me something to focus on.

I also:

  • Didn’t really ask about what vivas were like.
  • Didn’t have a mock viva.
  • Didn’t check over any recent papers to see if there was anything relevant to my work.
  • Didn’t reflect on my own journey.
  • Didn’t rehearse for responding to questions.

And I knocked on my supervisor’s door with fifteen minutes to go before my viva so that I could check a definition one more time, because I had suddenly gone blank.

 

What does all this mean? I don’t know. I was very busy getting ready, but could have been more effective. I did a lot of work but with no thought about whether it was the right thing to do. I don’t think I did anything unhelpful but I know missed things that could have made a real difference.

I was ready for my viva but with a bit of thought I could have been much more well-prepared.

Nathan

What Can You Do Better?

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A simple ten minute viva prep task: get a sheet of paper and write down three things you can do better now than you could when you started your PhD journey.

List them as quickly as you can. Pause, breathe, and write down a few words for each about how you know it’s true. For example, being able to program better because you have written code that you couldn’t several years ago. Or being a better interviewer because you recognise the sophistication of the questions you ask now compared to the start of your PhD.

If there are still a few minutes left then free-write whatever you can about what all of this means. What does being better at things mean for you, your work and – at the very least – for your viva?

Nathan

Questions About Your Thesis

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What might an expert make of your thesis?

What would a non-expert be able to understand?

What does your supervisor say about your work?

How much would your friends and colleagues need to know to talk about your thesis with you?

What would you emphasise in a summary or seminar about your thesis?

What points from your thesis connect with the work of your internal examiner?

What points from your thesis connect with the work of your external examiner?

 

None of these questions are typical of the viva. All could be helpful to reflect on beforehand so that you can think about what your work means, how you’ve written about it and how you might explain it to others.

Nathan

The Important Tasks

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When someone asks me about the most important viva prep task that they need to do, I offer a lot of encouragement and I ask  a few questions.

The truest response for a lot of questions about the viva begins with “It depends…” because there are always lots of factors.

Viva prep helps someone get ready for the particular challenge of the viva. In general, it’s important to plan first to reduce stress as you prepare. It’s important to have a clear idea of your thesis and the contribution. It’s important to annotate your thesis but also important to create summaries to help you think. And it’s really important to feel confident about being in the viva – so it’s important to make time for rehearsal.

By asking someone questions I might be able to give some more specific suggestions to them. I can tailor all of the general points above to the person: everyone needs to rehearse, but a mock viva might not be the best choice for someone. Annotation is key but everyone has different needs for a well-annotated thesis.

While a lot depends on the unique situation and individual, every PhD candidate benefits from remembering that the most important tasks are the ones that have lead up to submission. Every candidate creates a unique body of work, a unique thesis and a unique set of circumstance that leads to their viva. But no candidate gets that far without overcoming challenges, learning a lot and doing a lot.

The important tasks of viva prep help someone be ready for the particular challenges of the viva. The important tasks of the PhD journey help someone be ready for facing difficult challenges in general.

Nathan

When You Have To Stop

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There’s a moment coming when you will start your viva.

All of your preparations will stop. You will have to be ready.

What do you want that moment to be like? How would you like to feel? What would you need to know by then?

 

Whether your viva is a week away, a month from now or some date later this year take a little time to reflect on the questions above. You can’t directly control how ready you’ll feel but you can decide on and take steps that lead you in that general direction.

So what steps will you take? How do you want to feel when you have to stop?

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