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Year: 2023

Nathan

Ten Words

Daily Post

A quick bit of viva prep.

Write a few sentences on each of the following ten words. Don’t take too long, don’t overthink things, just reflect a little and then write a little:

  1. Thesis
  2. Examiners
  3. Methods
  4. Contribution
  5. Confidence
  6. Expectations
  7. Feelings
  8. Problems
  9. Success
  10. Questions

Put all of your sentences to one side for a few days, then come back and read them. Whatever you’ve written tells you something about how you’re approaching your viva.

What does it all mean and what do you now need to do?

 

PS: If you’re looking for more ideas of what you can do to get ready for your viva, take a look at the  Viva Help Bundle of ebooks. A collection of my best blog posts, a practical guide to getting ready and a reflective writing game to build confidence – available for £6 until Thursday 30th November 2023.

Nathan

Seven Reflection Questions

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When inspiration is not flowing there are tools you can use to unstick thinking. SCAMPER is one of those tools: an acronym to prompt looking at things differently. I knew I had written something about it on Viva Survivors before but was surprised when I checked that it was over five years ago!

Time flies, eh?

I was looking for inspiration for today’s post and SCAMPER stood out to me as a way to prompt a series of questions to explore different aspects of someone’s research in advance of the viva. These questions could help to find useful thoughts or parts of your research for further reflection.

  • Substitute: could you have used a different method to do your research?
  • Combine: what ideas did you bring together?
  • Adapt: how could someone use your research in the future?
  • Magnify: where would you direct someone to focus their attention in your thesis?
  • Put to other use: what other conclusions or questions can you find based on your work?
  • Eliminate: what did you have to take out of your plans as you did your research?
  • Rearrange: what changes would you make to your research process if you could?

After any of these questions you could also go deeper by simply taking your first response and asking, “Why?”

Nathan

A Little Help

Update

I’ve been publishing Viva Survivors for over six years. In writing more than 2300 posts I’ve shared why candidates succeed, what they can expect, what they can do to prepare and how they can find the confidence to believe that it will all be OK on the day. If you need a little help for your viva, you can probably find it in the archives of this blog

If you need a little extra help then remember the community you have around you: you know people who have examined vivas, who have prepared recently or who have succeeded in the past. There’s a lot of help close at hand if you look for it.

And finally if you have your viva coming up and you still feel like you need a little more help, then please take a look at the Viva Help Bundle of ebooks – which is on a very special sale until the end of November.

The Viva Help Bundle contains:

  1. Keep Going, my collection of 150+ posts from the first five years of the Viva Survivors daily blog.
  2. 101 Steps To A Great Viva, my guide to practical steps that every viva candidate can take to help themselves.
  3. How You Got Here, a short reflective writing game to look back over the PhD journey and find confidence.

Actually, there’s a lot of help packed into the Viva Help Bundle – and it is available for £6 until Thursday 30th November 2023. If you think it might be the help you’re looking for, please take a look. And if you want to know more, please get in touch 🙂

Nathan

Slow Prep

Daily Post

Prepare for your viva slowly.

Not by taking a long time for the sake of it, but prepare without haste, rush, external pressure or stress.

Plan in advance. Break up the work according to your situation. Leave space in your schedule for changes and unforeseen problems.

Take the time that you need to prepare well.

Nathan

Turn The Page

Daily Post

Thesis pages have words, gaps, lines, margins and space at the top and bottom.

Annotation is a key step in viva preparation: adding something to make what’s there even better for the purposes of the viva. You gain a little help when you do the work because you have to think about what you need to add and why – and you get even more by making a special edition version of your thesis to use in the viva.

Every page in your thesis gives you an opportunity to help yourself but you don’t need to add something to every page or overload every page with more words, underlining and highlighting. The opportunity could be used by thinking, “Actually, this is fine as it is.”

Turn the page. Look carefully. Add what you need.

Nathan

Retell Your Story

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Once upon a time, the story I told people about myself was that I loved maths, really enjoyed learning more about all kinds of maths, and wanted to do a Masters and a PhD. And I was happy and lucky that my supervisor was so good and supportive.

And a few years later I told anyone who asked that I’d enjoyed the challenge of my PhD in maths and was looking for new challenges. I felt very fortunate to have had all the support I had to that point, but I was looking for something else.

Nowadays I’m far more likely to just mention that I did a PhD (a long time ago!) and that gave me a start in the more important part of my life as a researcher-developer. I’ve spent fifteen years learning ways to help PGRs become PhDs.

Over time my story changed: partly because I grew older and had a different focus but also because I was telling different people about who I was and what I did.

My story changed because I saw myself differently, I understood myself better and I gained a better appreciation of things. I wasn’t lucky to get my PhD, I was fortunate that my hard work had paid off.

What story do you tell yourself about your success so far? What do you highlight as being the things that have made you the capable researcher that you are?

Whatever your story, remember that you are not the person you were when you started your PhD journey. Your story changes over time but you can also change the way you tell that story, both to others and to yourself.

Nathan

Rough Edges

Daily Post

Thesis submission typically comes after many hundreds of days of work: learning, development, growth and making something. You can’t get to that point without learning how to do something well.

Perfection isn’t attainable, but viva prep is a short period of time to help you get better for the particular task of the viva. You can clean up the rough edges of your memory, smooth over common stumbles in how you explain things and be more confident for meeting your examiners.

It’s a little work, but it can help a lot.

Nathan

Generalisations

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Be careful when you come to generalise your probable viva experience.

Regulations, viva stories and hearing about vivas from your department all have a role to play in building up your personal expectations. Be sure you have enough suitable information to build your expectations.

This idea also counts for when you think about your work.

You can’t generalise past experiences and responses to your research directly to your viva. Seminars, and past discussions don’t dictate what your examiners might make of your research. If you’ve had tricky meetings or difficult conference talks in the past that doesn’t have to define your future viva experience.

 

Read regulations, ask people you can trust and build up a good picture of what to expect. Reflect on your journey and remember that you have grown throughout the process.

You are capable, you are good enough and you must have made something by now.

That’s a reasonable generalisation to make about someone close to their viva.

Nathan

Viva Prep Party!

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Imagine that viva prep is an amazing party!

  • Look at your diary and think about when you’ll host it.
  • Who do you invite?
  • Do you need to invite more people so that you can be sure of enough help?
  • What supplies do you need to make sure that it goes well?
  • It’s a really long party probably, so what will happen when?
  • What do you need to do in advance to help it along?
  • And how will you maintain your own energy throughout?

Of course, viva prep is not a party but similar questions can help you organise, get help and do the work well.

That way you’re ready for the celebrations after your viva!

Nathan

3 Simple Questions

Daily Post

In viva prep there’s a lot to unpack when you reflect on your PhD, your research and your thesis.

If it seems overwhelming, start small with three questions:

  • Why did you do it?
  • How did you do it?
  • What can you do now?

Begin your viva reflections simply, dig deeper afterwards.

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