Excuse Me
There are many reasons that could explain unfortunate situations from your PhD. None of them are excuses: Lack of resources is not an excuse. A sudden change in circumstances is not an excuse. Your supervisor going on sabbatical is not...
what if
Responding To A Problem
As you prepare for your viva you might come across a problem in your thesis. I don’t mean a typo or a simple bit of editing that you’ve missed: typos and clunky sentences can still be understood, even if they’re...
Thought Experiments
I like thought experiments, both philosophically and in fiction. It can be fun to ask what if? and then follow that thinking to see what might happen next. It’s useful in the kind of work I do too, thinking through how...
Hypothetically
What if I forget something? What if I go blank? What if my examiners don’t like something? All hypothetical questions. All reasonable too: any PhD candidate could feel worried about these things for their viva. But why are hypothetical questions...
The Big What If
Your thesis isn’t perfect. You’re not perfect. Your examiners aren’t perfect. Your viva won’t be perfect. And all of that is fine. Remove the possibility. You can’t have something related to all of this be perfect, so try not to...
Red Herrings
I love reading mystery stories. One of my favourite things is trying to figure out which clues are red herrings. What are the distractions? Which things don’t matter? What gets in the way of important things? It’s not always so...
If & Then
Hypothetical questions are a pain for PhD candidates thinking about their vivas. If. If this happens, I’ll be stuck. If that happens, I won’t know what to do. Except it’s not just if. There’s always a then. In worry, a...
Wrong
There’s always a chance you’ve missed something. Not a typo, not a passage that needs editing, but something wrong. Maybe something that is a problem. It’s a very small chance though. Long odds. There’s a greater chance that your examiners...