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Nathan

Your Viva

Daily Post

Viva expectations are useful.

It helps to know that vivas vary in length and that some are more common than others.

It helps to know that examiners are prepared and they use certain questions more often than others to begin.

It helps to know that there are specific topics or areas that are regularly discussed in the viva.

It helps to know the ways that examiners direct the viva.

Expectations are useful and at the same time we have to understand that they are not predictive. You can know the range of times, questions and common approaches for discussion but you cannot know which combination you will find on your viva day.

You can’t prepare by trying to anticipate every possible permutation directly.

Instead, listen to viva stories and understand viva expectations as a framework. This is the shape of things. This is what vivas look like. This is what you need to be ready for your viva.

Nathan

Special

Daily Post

How big a deal is your viva?

There are tens of thousands of them every year in the UK.

Maybe over a thousand in your university.

Even at a department level there could be dozens.

And your examiners may do four or five per year.

And despite all of the work that leads up to it by everyone involved, it will probably be over in a few hours, and will probably be similar to a lot of other vivas that have happened before.

Not that special.

Except…

…your research is unique. Your thesis is one-of-a-kind. You’re the only person who has gone on the research journey you’ve completed. To do it all, you have to be amazing.

Special is relative. From the perspective that matters – yours – the viva is special.

And so are you.