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Nathan

Not Forgotten

Update

Hello all!

How are you? How have you been over the summer? Hard to believe that November is almost upon us. I don’t know where 2013 has disappeared to, and since I became a father in the last six weeks, time seems to have blurred past.

The podcast will be returning soon, as life starts to become normal for me again. If I have chatted with you in the past over email, please reconnect with me and we’ll set something up. If you’ve been listening to the podcast in the last few months (and the site stats tell me that a lot of you have) and would like to contribute your story, then please get in touch.

Follow @VivaSurvivors on Twitter – tweeting should be resuming soon – share the podcasts, and keep your eyes open for more announcements between now and Christmas, as well as the return of brand new episodes!

All the best,

NathanPS – I am loving being a dad! Our daughter CJ is just amazing.

Nathan

Site and Sounds

Update

Hello all!

It’s been a while since I updated, work and personal life have intruded and made it more difficult for me to record and post. That’s all coming to an end though! Although I have a major life change coming up (impending fatherhood), the podcast will continue. And the site is looking a lot better than it did already.

A week ago I went to an Intermediate WordPress course held at the Omniversity of Manchester, and I was shown just what I could get WordPress to do with a bit of thought and time. The site is by no means finished though, although improvements so far have included

  • a much nicer theme – this is the 2013 theme from WordPress!
  • better sharing buttons – so if you like something and want to tell other people please do!
  • better commenting – spam is now being blocked by Akismet!
  • a Twitter feed – because, well, you might not be following @VivaSurvivors yet!

Another piece of infrastructure that is being put together is the Viva Survivors Podcast Newsletter – I don’t have all of the answers about this yet, but soon I’ll have a subscribe option for this, along with details of what to expect and when to expect it. This isn’t the first stage in sending you lots of advertising, just a means to send on links and thoughts about the viva that don’t fit with the main podcast (at the moment). I’ll write again when the newsletter is started, but keep an eye out for that.

The last thing I want to mention for now is that I have been collecting links to articles, blogposts and media related to the PhD viva. One of my goals for the next week is to sensibly curate that for a new Links and Resources page on the site. If you know of any really valuable thoughts/links to share, then please let me know so that I can pass that on via the site.

That’s all for now: keep an eye on @VivaSurvivors on Twitter, and please comment or email me if want to get in touch!

All the best,

Nathan

Nathan

Happy New Year!

Update

I hope that you all had a great Christmas and New Year!

2012 was a great year for the podcast.

I really enjoyed talking with all of my interviewees, and hearing about their experiences during their PhDs and vivas. It’s been wonderful to share these stories and to see the number of visitors to the site increasing month-on-month; thank you to everyone who has emailed or tweeted me to ask questions, share thoughts and volunteer to be part of the podcast. Your contributions are very welcome and much appreciated. It is really great to hear that people are finding something of value in the episodes.

So, 2013!

12 episodes in 2012, so 13 episodes in 2013? No way! My goal is for there to be at least 40 episodes in the archive by the end of the year – and for there to be more research areas, backgrounds and current roles represented too. I want this site and the podcast to grow into an even more valuable resource for postgraduate researchers. I’m planning to run special episodes a few times this year: the first will be about the academic job market and it should be up on the site (schedules permitting) within the next few weeks. I’m also hoping to record a special with people who have experience of being viva examiners.

If you’d like to be part of either of these special podcasts, have questions that you’d like answered in them or have ideas for future special podcasts then please get in touch, either email me, or tweet the @VivaSurvivors Twitter account! And if you would like to be part of a regular episode, sharing your PhD and viva experience, or if you have ideas for other features on the site, let me know – it would be great to hear from you!

Thank You

If you’ve been listening, thank you. If you’ve been tweeting/retweeting about the podcast, thank you. Thank you to all of the “Viva Survivors” who have shared their stories so far. Thanks in advance to everyone who comes on the podcast this year!

Nathan

PS – Episode 13 will be live on Monday morning (7th January 2013), featuring Dr Liz Walder (@WalderWit) talking about her research and viva!

Nathan

Ask The Audience 1

Update

I’ve been asking a lot of questions recently via the @VivaSurvivors Twitter account. I wanted to know about the experiences of PhD graduates, even if that meant polling people in 140 characters or less. I had an inkling that people would share some really great advice. I was right! I’ll collect answers and share them on the blog over the next few weeks as I ask more questions. To start us off:

“What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given about the viva?”

@NextScientist gave an encouraging reply:

I asked this question again yesterday, and thanks to some signal amplification from @Nadine_Muller I got some more great responses:

All of which is great advice! Thanks to everyone for sharing. I particularly like the advice from Selena Daly: the viva really is the longest time you’ll get to talk about your PhD research in that depth. With that in mind you can hopefully approach your viva with the same passion you’ve approached your research for the last three (four, five…) years!

More questions to come soon. If you have any more thoughts, then please continue the conversation in the comments. And if you have more questions about the viva, what are they? Let me know!

Nathan

Coming Soon

Update

As I’ve been tweeting, the next episode should be recorded later today; with any luck I will be editing that tomorrow, and then it should go up on Wednesday or Thursday. I’m interviewing another maths colleague, but perhaps someone who had a different experience to the two mathematicians that I have talked with so far. I’ll tweet loudly when the podcast is released!

I’m also still mulling over what else might be interesting to have on the site: I’m looking for ideas of what might be really valuable for people who are preparing for their viva, or perhaps just things that might be a bit inspiring. If anyone has any ideas then do comment or email and let me know. I’m also looking to widen awareness of Viva Survivors by writing articles on preparing for the viva for University PGR-related blogs. If you would like a top 5 tips or similar then get in touch.

And as ever, follow on Twitter for announcements and updates: @VivaSurvivors

Nathan

What Else?

Podcast, Update

Last week I tweeted, asking

I’ve got one response so far:

This is definitely something that is in my mind, and I’m going to look around my contacts and see who has experience that they can share.

I’ve also been thinking about sharing some funny viva-related pieces. Many of you might be familiar with PhD Comics, which I am sure has had some viva-related humour in the past. As well as that I was forwarded a really funny piece of thesis examination preparation, care of McSweeney’s, “FAQ: The Snake Fight Portion Of Your Thesis Defence“.

Q: Would someone who wrote a bad thesis and defeated a large snake get the same grade as someone who wrote a good thesis and defeated a small snake?
A: Yes.

You can go and read the rest of it here – I am extremely thankful that I defended my thesis in the UK, where you simply have to know a couple of sets of Morris Dancing, rather than have to fight a snake!

To come back to my main question though: what else might be good to include in the podcast or on this site? What helpful resources or conversations could I try to provide? Let me know in the comments or email me!

Nathan

Episode 5: Dr Ben Libberton

Episode, Podcast

In this episode I’m talking with Dr Ben Libberton, who runs the website Literature Review HQ. Ben completed his PhD in Microbial Ecology last year, and recently graduated from the University of Liverpool. As well as running his site, he holds a post-doc in Electrical Engineering.

It was great chatting with Ben, particularly because of his continuing interest in things relating to postgraduate researchers. His site has some great resources, so please go and check it out. He’s also on Twitter: @litreviewhq.

Viva Survivors will be back soon with another episode! I have several interviewees in the pipeline, including a couple which will make for slightly out of the ordinary podcasts. If you have ideas and thoughts for future episodes, even for doing something different (whatever that might be!) then please get in touch. As ever, follow me on Twitter at @VivaSurvivors.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Nathan

The Viva Survivors Podcast is here

Podcast

About a year ago I had an idea to interview people about their viva and share their experiences, so that PhD candidates would have the mysteriousness of the viva demystified a little. I wanted to ask people about how they had prepared, what others had told them, and also ask them about their experience on the day.

When I started to develop the idea and talk to people I realised that it was not going to be enough to just ask people about the viva. It would be important to understand the context that they were in. What was their research about? Why had they done it? What had that been like? Did they enjoy doing it? And what were they doing now? What had their PhD meant to them, and what advice did they have for people who were researching now?

Following the name of some workshops that I deliver, I decided that it would be neat to call these interviewees Viva Survivors. Plus it just sounds cool!

Today the site launches with two interviews:

  • Dr Shaine Bushell, a PhD maths graduate from the University of Liverpool
  • Dr Anna Tarrant, a PhD social geography graduate from Lancaster University

In the next month there will be at least two more podcasts going up, and I’m looking for more people to interview so that I can maintain a regular update schedule of two or three new podcasts a month. Would you like to be interviewed for the podcast? I’m looking for PhD graduates from all backgrounds, all disciplines, all nationalities – whether you work in academia now or not, whether you were part time or full time, had fun or hated it – I want to hear from YOU! The listeners of the podcast do too.

So get in touch with me, either via my work site or on this site. Please tell people about Viva Survivors, volunteer to be interviewed – or if you have any questions or topics that you think I should cover in future episodes please let me know.

Follow Viva Survivors on Twitter at @VivaSurvivors!