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Year: 2025

Nathan

Keeping Tabs

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What can you do with sticky notes and highlighter tabs as part of viva prep?

  • Plan out your tasks!
  • Mark out chapters!
  • Point to typos!
  • Highlight key references!
  • Draw attention to important paragraphs!
  • Add notes!
  • Mark out key sections!
  • Colour code information!
  • Leave encouragements for yourself!

This is scratching the surface of course. There’s a lot you can do with very basic stationery to help make your thesis much more valuable as a resource for the viva.

Think about your needs. Keep it simple but get the most from your thesis and do what you can to build yourself up.

Nathan

A Reflection

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To reflect a little ahead of your viva, take a sheet of paper and divide it into four parts. Respond to each of the following questions with a few sentences.

  1. What was the starting point for your most significant work?
  2. What were the three most useful papers you read?
  3. What words come to mind when you think of your PhD challenges?
  4. What was the most helpful skill or understanding that you developed?

You can always build on any of these thoughts by reflecting on your responses and asking why.

A reflection or a summary is a chance to think ahead. What other useful questions can you think of to explore topics and that will help you at your viva?

Nathan

Top & Bottom

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Header and footer margins are fairly big in a formatted thesis. Plenty of space for you to add useful notes.

At the top of a page you might:

  • Write a short sentence about the page contents;
  • Have a keyword;
  • Highlight a particular place on the page;
  • Leave an encouraging note;
  • Write a reminder.

At the bottom of a page you might:

  • Add a remark about a key reference;
  • Summarise any corrections you expect;
  • Note any particular points you expect questions on;
  • Leave another encouraging note;
  • Write another reminder!

There’s a lot of space at the top and bottom of every page in your thesis. Plenty of space for you to add useful notes – but you have to decide what will be most helpful for you.

Nathan

The Default

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Two examiners and a candidate in a fairly anonymous university room. A facilitated discussion that takes place over two or three hours with one or two breaks. It begins with a big opening question and concludes with a short intermission while examiners check they’ve covered everything.

The above is one way to describe the default viva experience and yet every week I’d bet there is a viva taking place somewhere in the UK where:

  • The candidate needs to have three examiners;
  • The viva is finished in an hour;
  • Examiners ask in advance for a presentation to kick things off;
  • The candidate needs to bring resources with them like a screen, a prototype or something to demonstrate;
  • The viva happens over Zoom.

Of course, video vivas are much more common now than six years ago, but they aren’t thought of as part of the default option.

The default might give a sense of what your viva will be like – or what vivas are supposed to be like – but your viva will be unique.

Your research is unique. Your thesis is unique. You and your circumstances are unique.

There are regulations and expectations and a sense of what your viva will be like. There’s an idea of a default viva, but the reality of your viva. Any differences you perceive or need for your viva do not make for a situation to automatically worry about.

Nathan

Other Vivas

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Every viva is unique. All vivas follow patterns.

Some vivas follow patterns more closely than others.

A friend’s viva experience can give you a hint of what to expect but not the whole story.

Reading about someone’s feelings might help you to process your own, but only in part.

Listening to a podcast can give you some great tips but you still won’t know what you’ll be asked until you’re there with your examiners.

 

Knowing about other vivas is helpful.

Stories, experiences and regulations can feed into the pattern of expectations to help you prepare.

As ready as you can be, you won’t know the whole story until you have your viva.

 

PS: for more thoughts on how to resolve the tension between viva expectations and the fact that every viva is unique please take a look at The Expectations Issue of Viva Survivors Select, my latest curated collection of Viva Survivors posts and new viva help.

Nathan

Choosing Mistakes

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It’s likely there will be mistakes of some kind in your thesis.

Writing is hard. Proofreading is hard. Add to that hundreds of references and three or more years of research and it overwhelmingly likely that there are mistakes in your thesis.

It’s not your fault but you are responsible. Your examiners will most likely ask you to correct mistakes as a condition for you passing your viva and achieving your PhD. When they ask for this what they’re really doing is giving you an opportunity: would you like to make the best possible version of your thesis given the circumstances?

Given that you have spent years of work, a long time writing and a very long time thinking, here’s just a short time to make a final version. Finished, for good.

No-one wants mistakes or to have to correct them.

Which is better though: hoping and hoping for the small chance that you have no mistakes or trying your best and accepting that you’ll have some to amend?

Make your choice.

Nathan

Your Expectations

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What do you expect of yourself at your viva?

Viva expectations are often discussed in terms of length and first questions, format and examiner tone – but what do you expect from yourself? What should others expect of you?

  • A good thesis?
  • A capable candidate?
  • Lots of knowledge?
  • A little nervousness?
  • An understanding of the process?
  • At least a little confidence?

Together, you and your examiners can all reasonably expect that you’ll succeed at your viva.

Nathan

Margin Space

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In preparation for your viva you can use margin space to add to your thesis and make it as useful as possible for your viva.

You also need to balance.

Helpful but not overfull.

It doesn’t make sense to try to cram long sentences in.

Start by deciding on what you need from the space. What do you need to add to your thesis to make it useful? What does it make sense to put in the margin?

Keywords? Stickers and sticky notes? Things that draw attention to specific lines?

You have a lot of space in the borders. Your margins can be a useful space for viva prep, but don’t leave them cramped. The point is to make something useful for your viva.

A little thought and a little annotation goes a long way.

 

PS: viva coming up and an hour free tomorrow morning? Check out the details of 7 Reasons You’ll Pass Your Viva which is running at 11am tomorrow (Wednesday 24th September 2025). Find out why you can be confident, get access to a catch-up recording and my pdf guide to getting ready for the viva. Registration closes later this afternoon.

Nathan

Making Vs Having

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I feel that many PhD candidates expect they will have to argue a lot in the viva.

Arguing can feel like a loaded term. There are lots of negative associations with the word argument so we need to be clear for viva expectations.

The viva is supposed to be a discussion. Maybe you need to make an argument – presenting ideas and evidence and reasoning – but there should never be a situation where you have an argument.

The idea of having an argument is persistent. Some candidates expect that they will be countering points and questions that their examiners put forward. They feel they will defend their thesis by protecting what they have done and what they have written.

At times you might need to make an argument in the viva: make a case, lay out your thoughts and reasons. Put your view across and listen for your examiners’ thoughts.

Don’t expect that you’ll have to have an argument to be heard.

Nathan

Too Busy

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If you are too busy to prepare for your viva then you need a plan. Sketch one out at submission. Just a sketch. Can you spread the work over a month? What could you do in thirty minutes per day over three weeks and maybe an hour or so each day in the week before your viva?

If you are too busy to prepare for your viva then you need help. So ask for help! Talk to your supervisor, your friends, your family and make sure they know what you need with plenty of notice. Ask early so that anyone you live with can give you space and time to get ready.

If you are too busy to prepare for your viva then you need to make your working situation as good as you can. Get your materials together. Always know in advance what you will do with a chunk of prep time. Make yourself comfortable and perhaps find rewards for getting things done.

If you are too busy to prepare for your viva then you need to change how you feel. Reflect on and explore your progress to help you realise just how much you’ve done and just how proud you can be. Build up your confidence for the viva.

 

If you’re busy you still have to prepare. You can make a plan and make it nice but it’s still work. There are no shortcuts but equally it doesn’t have to be stressful.

If you’re busy: make a plan, ask for help, remove friction and build your confidence.

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