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Month: March 2025

Nathan

End Well

Daily Post

The simplest way to end your viva well is to:

  • Check that your examiners have no more questions for you.
  • Check that you have no questions that you need to ask them.
  • Listen carefully to what your examiners are telling you through the process.

Vivas tend to conclude with short breaks for examiners to confer.

They tend to result in minor corrections for candidates.

And they tend to end after several hours of challenging discussion about interesting and potentially difficult topics of research – which is why it’s useful to breathe, take your time and make notes if you need to.

No-one wants a really long and drawn out viva process. At the same time, no-one benefits from rushing through the final stages. End your viva well.

Nathan

Red Carpet Treatment

Daily Post

There are no silly questions for a PhD candidate to ask about the viva.

I’m continually saddened though that PGR culture – and regulations and supervisors – haven’t stopped candidates believing that their examiners are some higher order of human and thus need very special treatment at the viva.

Here are three questions I’ve been asking the last six months:

  • “Do I need to arrange catering for my viva?”
  • “Is it appropriate to buy gifts for my examiners?”
  • “Is there a formal way that I’m supposed to talk to my examiners?”

Again, these aren’t silly questions: these are stressed questions by people who desperately want to do the right thing. There’s a mystery to the viva process. There’s a substantial amount of work leading to it. It’s all important so there are a lot of motivations for a lot of questions that any candidate might ask.

To the questions above: catering might be welcome, but it’s not your job to arrange it; no gifts; being polite and friendly is enough.

 

Your examiners are professionals. They’ve come to do a job. It’s an important job, no more than that.

They don’t need a red carpet rolling out.

Expect them to be prepared. They expect the same from you.

Leave the formalities there.

Nathan

Airbrush

Daily Post

There’s a lot you might need to focus on from your PhD journey as you prepare for your viva: your contribution, the work you put in, time invested in building your skills and knowledge.

As you take time to prepare consider that it could be time to let some other things go.

Let go of disappointments. Don’t dwell on your failures, except what you learned from them. Airbrush out things that drag on your confidence. Leave behind past frustrations that aren’t helping you get ready.

What do you need to forget from your PhD journey? What can you leave out of the story you tell yourself of how you got this far?

You don’t have to focus on your whole PhD journey to find confidence and feel capable for your viva.

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