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Year: 2021

Nathan

My Story

Daily Post

Where do I begin?

Do I start with my teenage dreams of being a teacher? How I left those behind when my father died? Or do I start with telling you about my undergraduate degree in maths and philosophy?

How much should I tell you of my Masters, or why I didn’t continue working with my first supervisor from there?

When I talk about my PhD, should I tell you about the big results from my thesis? And if I do, do I leave out the miserable months of my second year when I could seem to make no headway? Should I tell you that those miserable months returned in my third year too?

What are the lessons that stand out? What are the moments I should share? What are the details that you need from me?

How did I get here? It depends on the audience. It depends on my mood. It depends on the story.

And in some ways it doesn’t matter at all.

 

A PhD story – or a viva story – can be useful. Listening to someone else’s journey is valuable; trying to tease out nuggets of experience and insight can be really helpful in finding things to try for oneself.

Far more useful though is the story you tell yourself about yourself.

I told myself I was lucky during my PhD, and it made me feel that I hadn’t worked for what I had.

Afterwards, I realised one day that I was fortunate – and that change of word helped me realise the work I had done, the skillset I had built and the confidence I could base on it.

My story? It’s good. It’s true. It’s changed over the years and stayed true.

What’s your story? Get it right, and it’ll help you through the end of your PhD, through your viva and beyond.

Nathan

Unanticipated, Not Unmanageable

Daily Post

Every viva is “unique, not unknown” – always different, but following patterns from regulations, expectations and even traditions within departments or universities.

We can also say with confidence that a viva could be “unanticipated, not unmanageable” in how it occurs. A viva could deviate from expectations in a way that no-one could expect from the outset: a question could be unpredicted, a comment could seem random, a line of discussion could even be uncomfortable.

All of which would be unanticipated – but not unmanageable. Given the time a candidate would spend working on their PhD, investing in their development and getting ready, the viva could be surprising, more than the expected challenge, but still within the capabilities of the candidate.

Unique, not unknown. Unanticipated, not unmanageable.

Which is the short way of saying that you can have reasonable expectations, and rise to the challenge of anything you can’t foresee.

Even shorter: you can do it.

Nathan

The 200 Reference Problem

Daily Post

“I have 200 references in my bibliography! How can I remember all those details?! What do I do if my examiners ask me about one of them??”

The 200 reference problem is not actually a problem. It’s a not-irrational worry linked to being perfect, the desire to know everything and be ultra-competent, but isn’t something to invest attention in.

How can I remember all those details? You can’t. Don’t try. Look for the most important references and do your best with those. It’s likely you’ve highlighted them in your thesis, but creating an edited bibliography could help you too.

What if my examiners ask me about one of these references? If your examiners ask you about one you can’t remember off-hand, you can check your thesis. It’s there with you in the viva to support your discussion. So check it. But it’s far more likely that your examiners will ask you about something important, something you know, than a random paper buried deep in the seventeenth page of your bibliography.

The 200 reference problem isn’t a problem. It’s a nudge to look again at your references and figure out how to use them as part of getting ready.

Nathan

X-Ray Your Thesis

Daily Post

You need to read your thesis to get ready for the viva. Then look deeply. Really look. What do you see?

  • What are the structures of your chapters like?
  • How do your chapters connect?
  • What are the key points in your work? (and why?)
  • Where are the safe parts you are absolutely sure of?
  • Where are the tricky parts you need to read again?

Scanning your work isn’t sufficient to be ready for your viva, but it helps you get there. Looking at and analysing the larger “bones” of your thesis is better than trying to commit hundreds of pages of words to memory.

Nathan

Space To Feel

Daily Post

In my writing and webinar work I try to help and to give perspective on the viva. I try not to share things like a great to do list, but also know that some people I engage will treat things that way:

If I do X then Y will happen and everything will be fine.

Everything probably will be fine. Things will probably work out the way you want and you’ll have the outcome you’re looking for – but the journey there might not be smooth, navigating the bumpy road of emotions, changes and endings along the way.

This has been hammered home to me in the last year as I’ve delivered webinars.

In a seminar room, people tend to have their public faces on. They could be unsure, they could be curious but they smile – there’s a mask in place. In a webinar, with cameras off and chat windows open, people talk more freely. Questions become longer than could be squeezed on a Post-it Note, and real emotions flow into the statements that people make:

I’ve not thought about how things are going to change… The pandemic hasn’t given me the chance or the pause until today…

I’m angry because of how my submission and viva will be so different than I had imagined!

I’m crying a little as no-one, not my supervisor or department, have told me that I’m good or talented before…

These aren’t direct quotes, but they are representative of what people have told me in just the last few months. Perhaps it’s been there in the background all along, and it took the shift to webinars for me to recognise it in candidates. Maybe it’s a more recent emergence brought on by the pressures of the last year.

In either case, if you want a to do list for getting ready, here’s my update: read your thesis, make notes, rehearse for the viva, boost your confidence…

…and make space to feel.

Reflect, not just on your talent to help build your confidence, but on where you are, how you got there and how you feel about all this. Happy, sad, angry, excited, scared – however you feel, make space for it. Unpick it a little maybe. See what you need to do.

Nathan

Tested By The Viva?

Daily Post

“Test” doesn’t seem big enough to think about the way you have to engage in the viva.

A test feels like a little thing, a one-time intervention where you are measured, checked and analysed. That’s not the viva. Maybe we could consider the viva being like a car’s MOT: a check that you are researcher-ready. You have everything in place and are ready to run as a researcher, if you wanted to, but still that wouldn’t feel quite right.

Better to say you’re examined in the viva. You’re challenged by the viva. You defend your work in the viva.

But it’s not enough to say that you’re simply tested by it. The viva is not so great and big as to be the most important thing you will ever do, but it’s not so small as to be simply a test.

Nathan

Play Time

Daily Post

I’ve shared a few posts for being playful in getting ready for the viva before, but nothing so comprehensive as Professor Pat Thomson’s post from March on “ten playful viva preparation activities“.

I love all of her suggestions, but the first particularly resonates given my general philosophy on getting ready for the viva – and my recent reflections on the end of my PhD:

Write a love letter to your Doctor self, listing all of the expert doctoral qualities and competencies they have. Write a break up letter to your student self, saying why you lived with them for so long, and explaining why it’s now time to leave them behind.

It would have been really helpful if Past-Nathan had taken some time to write a few letters to myself. I think I’d have felt better about how I was finishing. Working through that transition as I was coming to the end might have felt a little smoother.

There’s lots of great ideas in Pat’s list, so do go and check it out. Consider: how else could you play your way to prepared?

Nathan

Level Up

Daily Post

In some video games you defeat monsters or complete tasks and gain quantifiable experience that helps you to level up: over time you gain points to invest in making your character better. Stronger abilities, new equipment and perhaps completely new skillsets.

A webinar participant suggested to me that this was like the viva:

After much toil and many obstacles you have reached the hallowed halls of your destiny. You are the mighty wielder of the legendary Sword of Thesis! Only you can overcome the Terrifying Twin Dragons of Examination!!

For obvious reasons, I like the idea, but also I think the reality of the PhD presents something different to this fantasy viva micro-world. By the time you reach the viva, you – the brave hero – have levelled up so many times, and overcome so many great challenges, that the difficulties you face in the viva are not so terrible.

The Twin Dragons really aren’t so scary at all actually.

Questions can be managed. Fears can be resolved. You’re no longer a mere mortal.

There’s challenge for you in the viva, but your experience helps you overcome it.

Nathan

You Can’t Know Everything

Daily Post

There might be lots that you don’t know. If you tax yourself by thinking about all of the papers that you didn’t read, all the practical research you didn’t do (or couldn’t do) and all of the things you know that others know but you don’t then you could easily talk yourself into feeling bad about your thesis or your viva.

What you know, matters. You don’t know everything. You know enough. The things you know, the things you can do, have got you where you are. Not everything, but enough to get you to the viva and through the viva.

Not knowing something isn’t comfortable, but what you know can be enough to help you find confidence for your viva.

Nathan

Vivas and Sandwiches

Daily Post

If you order a sandwich in a cafe, you know there’s a certain set of expectations. Bread of some sort, in some shape; often two pieces or parts with a filling between them, generally simple and quick to produce. Lots of variety, but through experience you know the kind of thing you’ll receive.

The same is true of vivas, even if you’ve never had one before. You can ask others about theirs to get a sense of what to expect. Read the regulations for your institution, especially if your viva will be over video. Listen to stories to find out the common experiences for your department.

Questions vary, but vivas follow patterns that aren’t too hard to learn about. Every viva has qualities you would nearly always expect, like an internal examiner and an external examiner. Together they facilitate a discussion – with you and your work sandwiched right in the middle.

 

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