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Author: Nathan

Nathan

My Viva in a Haiku

Daily Post

Tired at the start,

Challenged throughout, but happy,

Four hours? Too quick!

 

I didn’t sleep well the night before, and my viva was a draining four hours – but it wasn’t bad, not really. My examiners had taken the time to read my thesis and think about it. They challenged me on how it was written but gave me respect. My viva was four hours long, and in a way, over too soon. Compared to the three-and-a-half years that lead to it, my viva was an anticlimax.

I wonder how you might describe yours in a haiku?

(more viva-related haiku here)

Nathan

I Like Hope…

Daily Post

…but don’t just hope that your viva will go well.

Don’t just hope that you’ll feel fine on the day.

Don’t just hope that you’ll get the right questions.

Don’t just hope that your examiners are a good fit.

Don’t just hope that you’ve done everything you can.

Don’t just hope that you’ll be confident as you start your viva.

It’s not about crossing your fingers and hoping it’s all fine. Do what you can so that you do feel fine, so that you feel good about answering questions, so you know about your examiners, so that you feel prepared and confident!

Don’t hope. Do something.

Nathan

Pedestals

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It’s not uncommon to look at your examiners and feel overwhelmed.

They’ve read more. They’ve done more. They probably know more.

You’ve had a few years to learn how to do research and to write your thesis; they’ve had so much more time to get good.

Maybe you look at your examiners and strain your neck to see them on the pedestal you’ve made for them. How does that feel?

(probably not great)

It’s not unnatural to compare yourself to someone else, but it might be unhelpful. You can be aware of your examiners’ achievements, but it’s your choice to compare yourself to them. You don’t have to do that. You can choose to learn about their work and use that knowledge to help you prepare.

If you do make the comparison though, make sure it is fair. Yes, they probably know more about your field, have published more papers and will have questions you may have never considered before…

…but you wrote your thesis. They’ve only read it. Even if you’re in similar fields, they didn’t do YOUR work.

Compare total work in your field and they’ll always win: a more useful comparison is one that relates to how much more you necessarily know about your work than they do.

Seriously, how high is YOUR pedestal?

Nathan

Leaves On The Line

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I travel everywhere for work by train.

I make my plans, check maps, routes, timetables and book things as far in advance as possible…

…and at least 30% of the time there is some kind of hold-up with the train.

Leaves on the line mean the train has to slow down.

A missed connection adds an hour to my journey.

Signal failures mean the train can’t go at all.

And last year I was stuck in a blizzard! Things got so cold that the track ahead froze solid – then when we got free, the train’s brakes went “funny” so we had to wait while a breakdown train came to help us.

Reflecting on all of this, I’m reminded of the viva. You can do all of the work, the research, the preparation and the confidence building – but then you could forget a detail on the day. You could be nervous. You could get a correction you weren’t expecting.

Or you or one of your examiners could be ill and the viva could be postponed!

But, like my train journeys, you’ll make it through. You’ll prevail. On a delayed train, in the moment I can be cross, frustrated or wonder “What will I do?” – but I’ve always reached my destination. During the blizzard I had to take two different trains than I’d planned, spend a freezing hour stood at Berwick-upon-Tweed station, and a total of twelve slow hours of progress but I got home.

Whatever happens around your viva, whatever “leaves on the line” slow your progress or make you doubt, you will make it through.

You can’t anticipate everything, but you can be certain you’re on your way to success.

Nathan

Small Things Add Up

Daily Post

There are big tasks involved in finishing a thesis and preparing for the viva. Sometimes, though, you can make a difference by thinking as small as “How could I make this one percent better?”

Think small!

  • What small things could you do to boost your confidence?
  • What tiny notes could you add to your thesis?
  • How could you help your prep in five minutes or less?
  • What’s the shortest way you can usefully summarise an aspect of your research?

You need to think big to get a PhD done. As your viva gets closer there’s a place for thinking small too.

Nathan

Enough Is Enough

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What if I hadn’t done enough? What if I needed more results? What if my examiners didn’t see what I saw in my work?

After years of work and months of writing up, as my page count crept towards 200, I started to think that maybe I needed more. A good friend showed me his thesis and it was like a tombstone. I worried until he showed me that the second half of his thesis was appendices of data. Then I worried when he told me that a colleague down the hall had passed her viva with a thesis that was less than sixty pages.

Oh no. What if my writing style is just really waffly and overlong? What if, like my italicised questions, they just go on and on and on and on…

My doubts faded. Of course, it dawned on me, that every thesis is different, naturally. It’s hard to quantify “significant” in the face of the variety of research that people do. There may be broad expectations in your discipline, in terms of style and structure and so on, and it’s worth learning as much as you can about those.

How do you know though? How do you know – or maybe a better word is believe – when you’ve done enough work? When you have enough results? How do you believe?

You have to look at it all. You have to get a sense both from others and yourself that the work you have done matters. You have to reflect on the fact that your thesis may be big or small, have five chapters or nine, and it is just different from everyone elses…

…and like everyone else who has come before, the reason you are here and you are going to pass your viva is because you can’t just be lucky. You can’t just show up and get the right answers or right ideas blindly. You have to be good. You have to do good work. And you have to have done that for a long time.

You have to have enough to be submitting.

You have to have enough to be preparing for the viva.

And that’s what can give you enough confidence that your work matters, you are good, and you will pass.

Enough is enough.

Nathan

Biased

Daily Post

How do you know your approach is a good one?

Is there only one way of interpreting your results?

Through years of study and focus, have you found one way of doing something, and now you only see that way of doing it?

Check your biases before the viva. Ask for your supervisor’s perspective. Ask if there were things that you discarded or which might be valuable. What have you ignored? What have you put to one side as you narrowed your focus?

You’re not looking for problems for the sake of it. You’re building certainty in the way you’ve done things, by being sure that you’ve not done something one way simply because you’re used to thinking of it that way.

Nathan

Don’t Go It Alone

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You’re the only person who can answer your examiners’ questions in the viva. That’s true in the sense that it’s your viva but also in the sense that you might be the only person who could answer their questions. As with the rest of your PhD, it’s up to you alone to do the work, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get help from others.

Tell colleagues you need them to listen, or you need to know about their viva, or that you want to ask a few questions about a topic they’re fluent in.

Tell your supervisor how they could continue to support you, or that you would like a mock, or that you want more feedback.

Tell your friends and family what the viva is, if they don’t know, and how they can help you.

For all of these groups, make it clear what you need and they’ll be more likely to help you get that. That starts with you being clear about what you need, and maybe why you need it.

Need help? Just ask.

Nathan

Ask For Their Opinion

Daily Post

Your examiners’ job is to examine you. (well, of course!)

But to do that they have to be experienced, they have to read your thesis carefully and they have to think a lot. While most of the questions in the viva will be aimed towards you, there’s no rule that says you can’t ask questions too.

So ask what they think. Ask what they would do next. Ask about publications and funding and monographs and anything else that you really want to talk about and get help with.

The first step is to think about what questions you would like to ask if you had the chance. Prioritise them and write them down on an index card for the viva.

The prompt can prompt you. (well, of course!)

It’s useful just in case you get so involved in answering the examiners’ questions in the viva that you forget there were things you wanted to ask too.

Nathan

The Weakest Parts

Daily Post

I think everyone, if they look, will find things in their thesis that they think are weak.

When they find them, they’ll feel bad and start to worry.

If this is you, you’ve found something and are worried, please reflect on the following three points:

  • First, it’s probably not as bad as you think. In wanting to succeed in your PhD, and wanting your thesis to be the best it can be, you’ve aimed for perfection and missed. Perfect is impossible.
  • Second, something that’s “weak” doesn’t just happen. There are reasons. List them, then interrogate them. Why did it turn out this way? What’s the cause? What could you do about it if you had more time/resources/interest and so on?
  • Third, weak is relative. If your thesis was all weak, you wouldn’t have made it to submission. You see something missing because you see what’s around it. You see something as weak because of strengths of your research.

Don’t ignore the weakest parts of your work, but try not to make them the biggest focus of your viva preparations either.

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