Daily viva help for PhDs
Five minutes is enough time to do something to help your viva prep.
There are many viva prep tasks that take more than five minutes but five minutes can be enough to make a difference.
Good is the standard you need to meet for your thesis and your viva.
How did you get this far? By being good.
Keep doing that.
A Bank Holiday is a good reminder to rest.
Maybe today’s not the day. A Bank Holiday in the 2020s isn’t a guarantee that you can take a break! But rest is an essential part of how we get things done. Even if your viva is coming up and you feel a little pressure to do more to get ready, you still need to rest.
You need to read, you need to rehearse and you need to rest.
Don’t fool around. Make it part of your viva prep.
Every viva is unique. Every viva is similar and different to every other viva. Vivas follow patterns. Vivas are not mysterious but you don’t know what will happen until you get there. Expectations are not guarantees.
Hearing about someone else’s experience at the viva can help you to understand what yours might be like. Learning about what happens generally can help put some parameters on what you can reasonably expect for your own.
But finding out that a friend didn’t enjoy their viva doesn’t mean that you won’t enjoy yours. Discovering that a group of friends all had long vivas might set some expectations with you, but doesn’t provide guarantees.
Finding out about other vivas is useful but only part of the process of getting ready. Read the regulations, ask your friends and colleagues about what happened and then use that information to help you as you prepare.
Your viva will be the same as many others and also different from every other viva. You can still be ready to meet your examiners and succeed on the day.
Last month I was finishing my setup for a webinar when something unexpected happened.
I was using Zoom, as I have for four years, and when I shared my screen it looked very different: I was in my slides! I was overlaid on my introduction, confined to the bottom left like a TV news presenter.
I panicked.
For five seconds I looked at the options, the images, the words, the clock in the corner ticking to when I had to start talking. For five seconds I panicked and frozen whilst also doing 101 things.
And then I remembered a key idea from my session: pause, think, respond.
Five seconds later I did and everything was fine.
It was a simple update to Zoom’s interface. An extra option and a change to the default. Something unexpected, leading to a very stressful thirty seconds.
After years of doing things one way – whether it’s Zoom or your research – it could be surprising or even panicking to be faced with something different.
In your viva, you might encounter questions you’ve not considered. You might hear an opinion that is counter to your own. You might need to think about options you’ve not thought through before. Any of these might cause a moment’s panic, but if that happened it’s OK.
Pause. Think. Respond.
Take your time. Get past the panic. Work past the worry. Respond as best you can.
Today is the 2500th daily post of Viva Survivors. I take a few days off each year for Christmas and with sharing the occasional webinar and my Kickstarter last year there’s been more than two-and-a-half thousand blog posts, but today is “officially” Post Number 2500.
When I decided to start a daily blog I didn’t have an endpoint in mind. I only wanted to share a post every day to provide some help. In that regard: mission accomplished!
I see every day as another chance to try something. Every day is another little reminder that I am the person I want to be, that I choose to be. 2500 is a big number, but every day is a milestone.
I do the work and pay attention and remind myself that I did it.
You can do that too. Do the work – whatever your research is – pay attention to the fact that you showed up and got things done and take time to remind yourself. The foundations of confidence in your capability rest on being aware of what you do and what that means. This helps with your viva and with your everyday life.
So show up. Do the work. Treat every day as a chance to do good work. Treat every day as a milestone towards your goal.
And whether this is your first Viva Survivors post you’ve read, or your twentieth or even your 2500th, thank you for reading!
It’s important to remember that the viva is a discussion.
The viva is not a quiz, not an interview, not a question-and-answer session. Your examiners have notes and questions and plans – but no script. There is no big sheet of things to tick off.
Questions and comments are prompts. They are a means to get you to talk. They help you find your way through and help your examiners see what they need.
Questions are not skewers! Comments are not automatically criticisms!
The discussion in the viva flows from your examiners: most of the questions will come from them. But that still leaves room for you to ask questions. There’s space for you to dig deeper too.
And even if the discussion does start with your examiners, where do their questions come from?
From your research, your thesis and ultimately from you.
An incomplete list of ways to read your thesis in preparation for your viva.
To avoid any doubts, I’m clearly signposting the last option!
Sketch out a plan around submission time for how you will read your thesis. Don’t leave it until the day before your viva. Take time to read your thesis in a way that suits you and your other responsibilities. Consider the best time to get the work done. Read your thesis carefully at least once. You don’t have to re-read your work: you just need to feel confident that you know what you’ve presented in your thesis.
Sketch a plan. Read your thesis well. Be prepared.
There are lots of posts on this site that encourage creating summaries or making lists. This isn’t because your examiners need to see them or expect you to quote from them in the viva.
Creating a summary is an opportunity to capture your thoughts on a topic, whether that’s the broad details of a research method or the key points of your examiners’ recent papers.
A summary or a list helps put your thoughts into words. If you have any topics, ideas, results or research that you need to make clearer as you prepare then take an hour to write a summary. You’re not crafting perfect paragraphs to quote: you’re finding words to help you think clearly.
Take a little time during your viva prep to make notes, write summaries and break down key information.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Lots of metaphors about the PhD and the viva recall marathons. They suggest perspective on how much time is involved, the pace, the determination and so on. It’s even common to see writers talk about the viva as the final mile of the PhD journey.
The viva is the last big challenge – but marathons aren’t 26 miles in length.
A marathon is 26 miles and 385 yards.
After 26 miles of progress there’s still a little more.
Not quite a quarter of a mile.
Submission is the 26 mile marker. The viva is that last 385 yards. Still a little to do. A little more work. A little more determination. But you really are almost there.