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Nathan

Learn About Examiners

Daily Post

An effective strategy for feeling better about the viva is to take steps to know more about the academics examining you.

  • Ask your supervisor about them. Find out why they are good choices for your viva.
  • Research their recent publications. Find out more about their specific research interests.
  • Search on YouTube to see if there are recordings of their conference talks. This can help remind you that they are real people!

It will also help to read the regulations and remind yourself what your examiners are there to do. They have training to be examiners and they want to do the job well. They’re there to examine, not tear your work apart or break you down. They’re focussed on finding the good, not amplifying the bad.

Find out a little more about them and you can encourage yourself towards a good viva.

 

Many thanks to Sarah F from Bristol who shared the idea of searching YouTube for conference videos at a recent webinar!

Nathan

What’s My Line?

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I hate the thought of forgetting something important.

I prepare before any webinar that I deliver – even if, like Viva Survivor, I have delivered the session many, many times before.

  • I have a 1-page session sheet on my desk. I write it out again before every session.
  • I also have a prompt sheet on-screen with key points and timings. Again, this gets reviewed before every session.
  • And I take at least an hour to look over my slides in parallel to reading my notes.

I have shared Viva Survivor with postgraduate researchers over 350 times. And yet, every time before I start, I think, “Wait, what do I say?”

 

You can’t take notes like mine to your viva. Your examiners are looking for a presentation not a conversation. But still you can do things to help yourself if you think you’re going to forget something.

  • You can annotate your thesis with helpful notes.
  • Invest time in reviewing your thesis’ key sections.
  • And it’s essential to rehearse responding to questions to help how you feel.

The last point is especially helpful.

Like me, you might feel bad at the thought of forgetting something that matters. Like my situation though, there are an abundance of things you can try to help you remember.

Nathan

At The Last Minute

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Don’t wait and start your viva prep in the week of your viva.

Don’t wait to ask your supervisor about something important until a few days beforehand.

And don’t wait until the last minute before your viva to think about how you feel about it all!

Sooner, rather than later, think about how you’ll get ready.

Sketch plans. Ask questions. Reflect on your PhD and how you’ve developed both yourself and your research.

Nathan

Run The Numbers

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Success at your viva is not directly determined by:

  • The number of papers in your bibliography.
  • The number of pages in your thesis.
  • The number of words on all those pages.
  • How many days you showed up to do the work.
  • How many meetings you had with your supervisor.
  • How many times you failed.
  • How often you were challenged.
  • The number of times you overcame significant obstacles to get your thesis done.

Success isn’t directly determined by any of these numbers but your capability and confidence can be helped by simply considering just how much you’ve done to complete your PhD.

Run the numbers. Reflect on how much you’ve done, how far you’ve come and what that all means for you and your viva.

Nathan

Further

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A reflection and summary task for viva prep.

Take a sheet of paper, divide it into three parts and respond with some quick thoughts on each of the following questions:

  • How much further have you advanced knowledge in your field through your PhD research?
  • How would you take your research further if you had the opportunity?
  • How could someone else potentially take your research further?

It’s definitely helpful to remind yourself how far you’ve come on your PhD journey. It’s a valuable exercise to think about how you or others could take things further.

Continuing in research might not be your plan, but it can help your viva prep to explore the context of what you’ve achieved and then think about how it could go further.

Nathan

Manageable Tasks

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Viva prep is manageable. Compared to the massive scale of a PhD it’s a speck of effort.

A candidate might take weeks to get ready, but only in bits and pieces of time.

Half an hour of reading. Ten minutes of looking something up. An hour to bring some notes together.

You can run these sorts of tasks together into longer prep sessions but that’s not an essential part of the process.

Even a mock viva, if you have one, is manageable.

Viva prep is a series of manageable tasks that make the viva itself manageable.

Nathan

Control The Controllables

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This is how an attendee at a recent webinar summarised what I’d said about getting ready for the viva.

Control the controllables.

He was absolutely right. That’s how I think about a lot of things connected with the viva.

There are things you can’t control or won’t know until you get there. These range from questions to feelings to the approach that your examiners will take.

There are things you’ll know but won’t control too: the purpose of the viva, the date or location of your viva venue.

But there’s also a lot you could take control of.

  • You can choose what you wear.
  • You can select the words you use.
  • You can plan out your preparation.
  • You can decide on how you’ll get to your viva.
  • You can choose what you do on the morning.

All of these things and more can help how you feel about your viva.

There are a lot of things you can take control of for yourself in advance of the big day.

If you do that then the things that are beyond your control won’t seem so bad.

 

Many thanks to Luke C for offering this observation!

Nathan

“This Is What I Did”

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It helps to listen to PhD stories and experiences. It can be very useful to hear about how someone prepared for their viva, what they did and how it helped them. Often it can be enlightening to know that someone else had a good viva and the reasons why.

Advice can give options and stories can give directions but you have to take responsibility in applying the relevant points to your own circumstances. If you feel that following someone else’s advice and ideas seems like it is going to be the wrong approach for you then you’re probably right.

Ask for advice. Listen to stories. Apply the best of it all to your situation to help you be ready for your viva.

Nathan

Short Breaks

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A short break when you submit your thesis can help to clear your head and change gears.

A short break during viva prep helps you to take necessary steps to relax.

A short break during the viva can allow you to gather your energy and restore your focus.

A short break at the end of the viva is for your examiners to have a final chat – and for you to wonder what they’re going to say when they call you back in!

 

Short breaks help with lots of stages of the viva process. Perhaps decide in advance what you might do for that final short break so that you’re not simply worrying while you wait.

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