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Year: 2025

Nathan

You Can Take Action

Daily Post

I feel like I’ve written this a lot in recent posts – and over the years of writing Viva Survivors! – but it’s worth repeating: when you encounter a worry or a problem as you get ready for your viva there is no situation where you can’t take action to improve things.

Your action might be:

  • To stop and think;
  • To come up with a plan;
  • To ask a friend for help;
  • To read the regulations for thesis examination at your institution;
  • To talk to your supervisor;
  • To read something and think.

Or more generally to just do something. You could feel worried, stressed or unsure – but you can still do something.

Remember that you always have the option to try something to make your viva prep situation better. If you’re worried or stressed a good first step might be to ask for help, particularly if you’re feeling unsure what to do.

Work past worry.

 

PS: for more encouragement take a look at the eighth issue of Viva Survivors Select. I released The Survival Issue yesterday which contains twenty posts from the Viva Survivors archive plus new writing to help with making it to the end and through the PhD journey. Take a look!

Nathan

Viva Survivors Select 08

Update

This month’s issue of Viva Survivors Select is the last of Volume 1. I’m taking a break from the zine for a few months and aim to return in April 2026 with the start of a new monthly run. It seemed appropriate that this final issue (for now!) should be The Survival Issue.

Cover of Viva Survivors Select 08, The Survival Issue. Dated November 2025 by Nathan Ryder Foreground text boxes show details of the issue title etc. Background image shows a mountain path with rails, more mountains in the distance and a blue sky with a few clouds

We tend to think of survival as life and death. This is why so many PhD candidates who hear the phrase “surviving the viva” think that it must be a terrible ordeal that they’ll barely make it through. To survive means to manage to keep going in difficult circumstances. To survive your PhD means to work and make it through the challenges you face. To survive the viva means to rise to the particular challenges after the journey you have been on.

The Survival Issue contains twenty posts from the Viva Survivors archive exploring many aspects of survival. The issue is reflective, proactive and looking ahead for a candidate’s future. Surviving the viva is a topic I’ve been exploring for fifteen years in seminars, books, blog posts, discussions and pretty much every working day. It really did feel like this had to be the final issue of this volume!

I also share memories of how I survived my viva and what still stands out to me seventeen years later. Finally, I offer a simple reflective series of questions to help unpick the difficult circumstances of a PhD journey – a helpful activity for viva prep.

Viva Survivors Select 08 is out now for £3 and joins the previous seven issues in this volume. If you like the blog, want more help and want to support what I do then please take a look at and consider buying The Survival Issue.

Please do pass on details of this issue and Viva Survivors Select to anyone you know who is looking for viva help – and look out for the first issue of Volume 2, coming in April 2026!

Thanks for reading!

Nathan

Nathan

Where Is Your Focus?

Daily Post

Where are you giving your attention when you plan your viva prep?

You don’t have to do everything all at once. You don’t have to do what everyone else does.

It might be a good idea to summarise the content of each chapter in your thesis – but equally you could focus on the contribution of your thesis as a whole. Either way could work well to get you reviewing and reflecting.

Having a mock viva is a good general preparation idea – but it might be even more helpful for you to explore different ways of explaining key parts of your research to friends or in a presentation.

Be mindful of your focus as you get ready. Are you doing what you need to do to get ready?

Nathan

Assumptions

Daily Post

Whatever you assume about your viva will have an impact on how you prepare for it, how you feel as you get ready and what you do as you start talking to your examiners.

Before you get to that point it makes sense to check regulations, viva stories and general expectations: do your assumptions line up with what the rules and other people say about the viva?

 

If you assume that your viva is going to be hard questions and unfair criticism then you’re going to make a tough time for yourself.

If you assume that your examiners are there to talk and listen and prompt a discussion then you might still be nervous but you’ll be able to prepare yourself.

And if, after all the work you’ve invested, you assume that you’re ready then you will approach the viva with a more positive outlook than if you assume you are somehow lucky or just getting by.

 

PS:  very quick announcement that The Survival Issue of Viva Survivors Select is out tomorrow! This is the final issue of this volume and joins seven other collections I’ve curated and released over the last seven months or so. Do look out for an announcement email tomorrow 🙂

Nathan

Viva Survivor, 3rd December 2025

Event, Update

Do you need to know more about the viva? Do you want to know what to do to get ready? Do you want space to ask whatever questions you have and find help for whatever worries you’re feeling?

There are many ways to find all of the above – talking with your supervisor, asking friends, consulting with your Graduate School and even looking around on this website.

One other place to get help would be at one of my webinars. You can find out about the next opportunity by checking out the details of my Viva Survivor session on Wednesday 3rd December 2025.

What can you expect from Viva Survivor?

I’ve delivered Viva Survivor for the last 15 years. I’ve shared it with more than 8000 PhD candidates at universities and for programmes all over the UK. In that time and in over 400 sessions I’ve been continuously developing the session to be as helpful as possible to PGRs.

There’s a lot more information at the link about the webinar on Wednesday 3rd December 2025 and if you have any questions please get in touch. Viva Survivor is one of my favourite things to do and I’m really looking forward to this session, my only remaining independent Viva Survivor of 2025.

Thanks for reading!

Nathan

Nathan

List Ten Problems

Daily Post

Here’s a little viva prep exercise to unpack problems you faced on your PhD journey.

Start by listing up to ten problems that you faced. These could be access to literature or resources, time challenges, supervisory issues, personal circumstances, a particularly difficult research issue or something else.

Once you have up to ten on your list take a minute or two to rank them according to severity, starting with the one which had least impact and then working your way to the most severe.

For each one write a few notes to respond to the following questions:

  • Why was it a problem?
  • How did you overcome it?
  • What was the specific impact on your PhD?

Reflecting and writing you will build up ideas for how you could talk about this with your examiners if the topic comes up at your viva. You might make connections between problems and see there was a deeper issue you addressed.

However big the problems were you will also see that you were able to rise to meet them: you overcame a lot to get this far and that means something, both for your research and for you.

Nathan

Watching Out

Daily Post

You can’t eliminate every potential stressor or difficult question ahead of your viva but through preparation you can be aware of them.

Read your thesis and reflect on your research. What was stressful? What was difficult in a negative way? Was there anything over the course of those years that made doing the work difficult?

Ahead of your viva you can prepare for engaging with those topics if they come up at the viva. You don’t have to say everything but you might have to say something that you’re uncomfortable talking about.

Writing some notes beforehand, talking with your supervisor or a trusted friend or even using the mock viva as a way to prepare can all be useful steps to getting ready if there’s a sensitive topic.

You can’t remove difficult topics from the viva conversation. You can be aware, you can watch out and prepare to engage well.

Nathan

“I Had To”

Daily Post

Those three words might be true but they will never be enough for a response to a question in your viva.

There’s always a reason and it’s always worth digging into. You always need the “because” or the “why” behind doing things a certain way in your PhD.

 

“I had to” might be the first words that come to mind with something difficult or even something particularly challenging in your research journey. If you know of situations like this ahead of your viva then it will be helpful to consider what else you could say. If it’s a sensitive topic you’ll probably still need to say something more than “I had to” – so think in advance what you might feel comfortable saying.

Nathan

Change For Your Prep

Daily Post

There might be a certain logic to do some of your viva prep in a different space to where you would typically work.

A different space allows you to think away from your typical environment. Maybe working at a different time could give you a new insight into how you work or what you’ve done well. Working in a different way (writing longhand rather than typing) might change the pace of your observations or the way you think about things.

Viva prep could be a really good time for changing things up as you get ready for your viva.

Nathan

Keeping Score

Daily Post

You don’t get points for right answers in the viva.

You don’t get marks deducted depending on how long you take to respond.

You don’t get a final mark – there’s no A, B or 7/10.

Your level of corrections aren’t a grade: they are simply a part of the process.

 

You can keep score for yourself before your viva.

Tally the days you showed up. Count the papers and books you’ve read. Add up all the versions of all of the pages you wrote. Consider how many times you’ve done the practical elements of your research (experiments, models, paper, interviews, hypotheses and so on).

When you consider the numbers of all of these things you can see that you’ve built up an impressive score of your own – that corresponds with your capability, your knowledge and the confidence you can feel for meeting with your examiners and succeeding at your viva.

 

PS: If you want more idea on confidence building then take a look at The Confidence Issue – the most recent curated collection of Viva Survivors Select. Twenty posts from the Viva Survivors archive plus new helpful resources. And the final collection of this volume, The Survival Issue, will be released next week on Wednesday 12th November 2025!

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