Daily viva help for PhDs
Not just the 1st of January. Not the 2nd, once you finish celebrating New Year’s Day!
Every day is a chance to look at what you do, how you do it, why you do it and think, “What else…?”
What else can you do to help build your talent?
What else can you do to steer your confidence?
What else will you need to be ready for your viva?
What else can you achieve in this new year?
Deep breath.
Get ready.
However much of your PhD is left, whatever 2020 did to you, take what you’ve got – of your research, your thesis and yourself – and build on it.
Find what’s good and do more good.
Find what’s hindering you and steer away from it.
Find what you need to help you get to submission, to the viva and beyond.
If your viva is this year, even if it’s months and months away, just reflect, “What could I do to help myself be ready?” Tuck those thoughts away, and come back to them when it’s time to prepare.
One more time, survive means “manage to keep going in difficult circumstances“.
My wish for you for 2021: Keep Going.
2020 hasn’t been an easy year, has it? 2021 feels like it’s going to be tough too.
There are still challenges and changes ahead of us all. As with the viva, to begin with, we’re called to survive – which means “manage to keep going in difficult circumstances“.
Surviving might be uncomfortable sometimes. It might be at odds with your preferences or skillset. But there are reasons you’ve got this far; reasons that have helped you through these difficult circumstances. Remember them and keep going.
We head towards the end of the year with today’s look back at some of the shortest posts I’ve written and published in 2020.
Short posts are fun to write. Sometimes they come from a great big idea that I can express concisely, sometimes I realise that fifty words is simply enough. I’ll be thinking a lot in the coming months about shorter posts, and maybe some way to share a collection of them.
Tomorrow we finish the review of the year’s posts with a topic that has been on my mind a lot: surviving.
We continue the review of this year’s 350+ blog posts by exploring a handful of the longer posts I’ve written. Most days, the posts are between 150 and 200 words, but occasionally I go into greater depth or length on a point!
Brevity is good, but I really like having the space to reflect sometimes. Have you read any other long posts on the blog that you liked?
Tomorrow: we get back to keeping things brief, and I share the best of my short posts from this year!
Every year on the blog I finish by sharing a few days of my favourite posts from the year. We start 2020’s round-up with the important topic of viva preparation, and posts that cover many different aspects of getting ready for the viva.
What will you be doing to get ready for your viva? And have you read any other helpful posts on the topic on Viva Survivors, or elsewhere, that you could share with someone who needed help?
Tomorrow: the best of my long posts from this year!
Very best wishes from my family to you and yours, wherever you are. I hope you take a break in the coming weeks, rest, relax, recover a little. I plan to!
Viva Survivors is on a break now for a few days; service resumes with four “Best of 2020” days from Monday 28th December 2020. These list posts from the year that I think are particularly good. From Friday 1st January 2021 we’ll be back to regular new posts every day.
You can catch up on any or all of those later though. For now, rest. If your viva is coming up in January, it can wait for now. It really can. Take a little time for you and your loved ones.
Happy Christmas!
What will you do when you pass your viva?
Who will you tell first?
On that day, maybe that evening, after the first thrill has passed, what will you do to mark the occasion?
(it may be that you have to get a little creative of course, depending on when you have your viva…)
Once you have these images of celebration and success in mind, use them to motivate you. Use them to persuade yourself that you’re on track. Use them to boost your confidence or commitment to getting ready.
And use them to make your imagined celebrations real, when the time comes.
That one question you know you’ll struggle with.
It might be a rational concern or an irrational worry, but either way, you can do something about it. Whatever the question is about, if you know it troubles you before the viva then you can do something to prepare for it.
If there’s a question that bothers you before the viva, then you can do something just in case it comes up.
Two words, spoken by my internal examiner, as we approached the end of my viva.
Two words that came after he had summarised my final chapter.
Two words that followed a summary of “In Chapter 7 you detail your failure at solving a problem.”
“That’s interesting.”
Two words that seemed as if they were followed by a yawning void of time as I tried to understand what he meant.
Two words that I realised were not, in fact, a question.
Two words that were a simple comment, an observation.
Two words that I responded to by saying why I had felt it important to include preliminary results, why it still might help someone.
Two words from him, two minutes of talking from me and then a simple response of “OK” afterwards.
Two words or two sentences or two minutes of talking from either of your two examiners could make your heart skip a beat as you wonder what was meant and ponder what to say.
Take a breath, think, try to understand. What do they mean? Then respond.
Sometimes a simple comment is simply a comment: you don’t need to say much in response at all.