Asking The Literature
When the viva is coming up you’ll want to be sure of your methods. Can you defend them? How did you arrive at them? Were they the only way to tackle the problem? You’ll want to get your head clear...
Daily viva help for PhDs
When the viva is coming up you’ll want to be sure of your methods. Can you defend them? How did you arrive at them? Were they the only way to tackle the problem? You’ll want to get your head clear...
A mock viva is not a silver bullet that will solve all of your nervous feelings about the viva. What are you looking for from your viva preparations? Confidence? A better picture of how you see your work? A clearer...
“Do I really need to have a mock?” I get this question from nervous PhD candidates. They’re nervous about the actual viva and that carries through to any idea of a rehearsal. They’ve heard of mocks and all they can...
There are lots of people around you who could help you get ready for your viva. While you might do most of the work by yourself, there’s a lot you could find from others: Two supervisors, maybe more: they’ve seen...
The red digits on my bedside clock radio say 02:30. I’m tired, my head’s empty. Sleep is a stranger on a hill far away. My viva is in seven-and-a-half hours – correction, seven hours and twenty-nine minutes. I’m not worried....
What do you need to know about your examiners? What will help you to feel happy about them being the ones asking questions in your viva? Google is your friend. You can check out your examiners’ staff pages and their...
Let’s say you could take a big red button to the viva: a kind of game-show like buzzer, and whenever you wanted to you could press “pause” on everything. Would you use it, if you had one? Why might you...
Day one of viva preparation doesn’t have to be re-reading your thesis and exploring your examiners’ work and writing summaries and practising questions and sticking in Post-its AND reading 101 blog posts about how to do everything! Day one can...
I think you can love your viva, but probably only after the fact. Before it you can be excited, but you’ll still be wondering, “What if…?” about something. You can look forward to it, and it will probably go well,...
Ask your supervisors what they think about your examiners, your work and vivas in general. Ask friends who have had their viva what they think you should do to prepare, what their viva was like and how they felt about...