A Little Help
I’ve been publishing Viva Survivors for over six years. In writing more than 2300 posts I’ve shared why candidates succeed, what they can expect, what they can do to prepare and how they can find the confidence to believe that...
viva survivors
Six Thoughts On Six Years
Six years of the Viva Survivors daily blog. Wow. Time flies when you’re planning, writing and publishing an original and helpful blog post every day! What stands out to me from the last six years? As time goes by I...
The Best Of The Best Of Viva Survivors 2022
At the end of December I shared five days of posts recapping my favourite writing from 2022. In case you missed that or you’re looking for some helpful highlights, here’s the best of those five days, with links to each...
Time Off
It’s a time of year where people typically take some time off. I’m already doing that – I wrote this post weeks ago so that I could enjoy more family time! Viva Survivors will continue to update every day until the...
The 2000th Viva Survivors Post
(I couldn’t think of a snappy name!) Except for the odd Christmas Day off here and there, I’ve now written and published 2000 days of posts on: viva expectations; viva prep; examiners; the PhD journey; and viva confidence. And a...
Four Years
That’s how long I’ve been writing this blog. Longer than I spent on my PhD! I started with the following short post in 2017: I’ve got a few questions for you: Did you do the work? Did you show up...
Still Interesting Times
A year ago, just before the first UK lockdown, I wrote “Interesting Times” – an extra post for March 16th, recognising that difficult change was coming hard and fast. A year later, it feels like that change has never stopped....
Viva Survivors: Your Questions Answered
I’ve had a lot of fun delivering Getting Creative and 7 Reasons You’ll Pass Your Viva in the last month, and been floored by the support people have given them and how valuable they’ve said they were. So I decided...
My Vision
I started the year helping to deliver a Leadership In Action workshop in Manchester. As part of the course, each of the facilitators had to deliver an “insight” – a thirty minute, one-off presentation about something connected with leadership. I...
Advice and Action
When I did my PhD there was very little help available for viva candidates. Now there is help everywhere. There are scores of advice articles for the viva and probably hundreds of blog posts about personal experiences – you can...