Your supervisor is well placed to give you a different perspective on your work. You know how you’ve thought about and written about your work; they could give you their impressions as a more experienced academic, or share how an examiner would approach your thesis.
Friends and colleagues can offer their perspective on the viva process. Any PhD graduate could share their experience to help broaden your understanding of what to expect. A graduate from your department might be able to give you a nuanced expectation of what a viva is like in your discipline.
Your graduate school or doctoral college can help give you the big picture perspective on the viva. They can share regulations, requirements and as much paperwork as you can manage to show you what the process of the viva is meant to be like.
What other perspectives do you need as you get ready for your viva?
You might have a viva that’s finished in an hour or less, but it’s not very likely. You can hope, but that’s about all you can do.
Instead of hoping you get some rare occurrence, why not focus your energy on something that could help you more in your viva?
Read your thesis. Write summaries. Rehearse for the discussion. Do the work to be ready for what happens, rather than hoping you get a rare, short viva.
101 Steps To A Great Viva is a short guide to the many things that a PhD candidate can do to work towards a great viva. From understanding expectations to building confidence, via planning your viva prep and asking for help, the guide covers 101 actions that any candidate can do. I share a concise and simply-framed statement for each followed by an exploration of what that means, how someone might do it and what it does for being ready for the viva.
101 Steps To A Great Viva is the publication I’ve been thinking about for years: an original, short guide of viva help. Bite-sized help built on my experiences of working with over 7500 postgraduate researchers and writing the Viva Survivors daily blog for more than six years.
I’m really pleased with what I’ve developed and 101 Steps is 95% complete. A few more edits and it will be ready to be printed. Which is where I need help!
Draft of Page 7!
A few weeks from now I’ll launch a Kickstarter campaign to fund producing a print run of 101 Steps To A Great Viva. I need people to help me by pledging money – and in return I’ll be offering rewards, from copies of the guide, ebooks and print copies of my last publication and even 1-2-1 Zoom conversations with me! If everything goes well enough with the crowdfunding, I’ll be sending out the first copies of 101 Steps in July 2023.
If this sounds at all interesting to you today, here’s how you can help:please go to this link and use the “Notify me on launch” button. That way you will be emailed on the day I launch the campaign, which I’m expecting will be Tuesday 9th May 2023. Using the “Notify me on launch” button won’t obligate you to pledge any money at all. The campaign will run for about three weeks after that, but early interest really helps with the algorithms that help organise these services.
Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you check out 101 Steps To A Great Viva!
Ask your family and friends to give you a little space, time and quiet in advance of your viva. You need a good environment to prepare in. They can help provide that for you. Let them know what you need and work with them to make it a reality.
Ask someone to drive you to university on the day of your viva, if you’re having your viva in-person. You need to arrive rested. Travelling by public transport or driving yourself could take away from your focus and energy; asking for a lift could help you to arrive at your viva in a great condition.
Ask yourself to believe something: to believe that you are good enough. To believe that you have come as far as you have through hard work, personal development and making something that matters.
The last favour might be the biggest you could ask, depending on how you’re feeling – but if you can grant the request you’ll find a confidence that will help a lot on viva day.
I like making bread, but it’s a practice I’ve fallen out with of late. I must get back to it. It’s a hobby I’ve let fall by the wayside for too long.
I’m not the world’s greatest at all, but I’ve mixed enough dough enough times that I feel competent. If I read a recipe for a style of loaf or roll I’ve not tried before, I feel capable enough to give it a go. If I look in the cupboard and see we only have half the flour I need, I feel confident to tweak the recipe or make a substitution. And if I decide I want the dough to prove for a long time, or even in the refrigerator, I will happily alter the ratios of different ingredients to compensate.
I haven’t baked once this year, but if you asked me to make a loaf tomorrow I’m sure I could do it.
When you get to your viva, you have more than proved yourself. You have done the work. You have experience. You have knowledge. You can rise to challenges. Your examiners might ask you about something new, something different or something hypothetical. Why should any of that disturb you? Given everything you have done, how could that be beyond you?
Like me and my breadmaking, go with what you know. Refer to how you did something before. Build on past experiences and understanding. Adapt and engage with the discussion your examiners present, rather than simply hope it will be everything you wanted.
Prove yourself in the viva, as you have proven yourself many, many times before.
Draw confidence from your past successes as you work towards your future achievement.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to preparing for the viva. As every thesis and candidate are different, and every set of circumstances for viva prep are different too, so every person has to decide for themselves how best they are going to approach things – rather than listen to someone on the internet telling them what to do.
With all of that said, here are some general ideas from someone on the internet that might help you – or not!
Plan your prep in advance and allow two to four weeks to do the work.
Start your prep by reading your thesis.
Ask friends from your discipline about what helped them get ready.
Read the regulations to get a feel for viva outcomes.
Arrange a mock viva.
And very importantly: test any advice against how you feel about something. There is a lot of good advice, a lot of well-meant advice and support for the viva, but it doesn’t apply to every situation.
A mock viva is regularly seen as the gold standard, “best way to rehearse,” but it might not be what you need (for lots of possible reasons).
Read the rules of thumb, explore ideas that have worked for others and then square all of that with your experience, your preferences and your needs. It’s helpful when others share advice, but ultimately you have to find a way to do the work.
Like nervousness, silence might not feel comfortable sometimes but it doesn’t necessarily mean something negative.
In your viva a moment of quiet could be while you or an examiner checks a detail or finds the right place in your thesis. You might need a quiet pause to think or read, or to make a note. Silence could be a side-effect of a video viva delay or a simple pause to settle after a noise from outside.
Silence in the viva is a brief quiet between questions, responses and discussion about really important things. Silence in the viva is not for long before the words flow again. Silence in the viva is just one of those things that will happen.
Prepare for talking at your viva by rehearsing and talking before your viva. Use that opportunity to prepare for the silence too.
