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Author: Nathan

Nathan

Asking The Literature

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When the viva is coming up you’ll want to be sure of your methods.

Can you defend them? How did you arrive at them? Were they the only way to tackle the problem?

You’ll want to get your head clear on your conclusions too.

What are they? What do they mean? Why do they matter?

Maybe you’ll want to spend some time reflecting on what else you or someone could do with your thesis as inspiration.

How could you follow up this work? Who do you hope will be influenced? What’s your dream for how someone would take this forward?

These are all good questions that focus on your research – but spare a few questions for your literature review and bibliography. Your work doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it didn’t appear from nowhere. What were the most helpful references that influenced your methods? How did your reading support your conclusions? What does the literature tell you about the way your discipline is evolving?

Changing your perspective is useful. Different questions and perspectives can help prompt different reflections. You can probably find something interesting and valuable by thinking about where your work has come from.

Take some time before the viva to reflect on the literature that helped you complete your thesis.

Nathan

Formally Informal…

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…or Informally Formal?

How do we classify the viva?

  • Are there regulations that spell out that the viva is relaxed and has a format which allows for variation?
  • Or is there an understanding among everyone involved that this is serious, but that the rules are agreed on by the “community” rather than someone at the top?

Which is it? Could it be both? Or neither? Does it matter?

I think what matters is that candidates check the regulations, find out about experiences and expectations, then think about what they need to do to meet them. The classification for how formal the viva is or isn’t is just one more piece of baggage, that doesn’t help unless we know what’s really involved.

Nathan

Mocks Aren’t Magic

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A mock viva is not a silver bullet that will solve all of your nervous feelings about the viva.

What are you looking for from your viva preparations?

  • Confidence?
  • A better picture of how you see your work?
  • A clearer understanding of what the viva is like?
  • Opportunities to practise?
  • Opportunities to think and get your head straight?
  • A chance to check your own talents?

If you know what you’re looking for, you can think about how you might find it. And while it’s not a magic solution that solves everything, when you think about what it can do, a mock viva could help with all of the above.

A mock viva is not a silver bullet, but maybe it’s good enough that we can think of it as a bronze arrow?

Nathan

Scoring The Viva

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Introduction: The Place Where The Post Starts

Today’s post is a little different. I’m often asked about the criteria for the viva. What do examiners look for? How are candidates assessed? These are good questions and I’ve decided that today, April 1st 2019, I’ll share details of the assessment. Academics do not want these to be widely known, but I think it’s important that PhD candidates are not fooled by rumours!

Score 100 Or More: The Goal Of The Viva

In the viva you’re trying to get a score over 100. Your score starts at 100, but your participation in the viva can raise or lower this score.

Your score increases by 1 for every question you’re asked and for every minute you spend answering that question.

Points are deducted for overly long hesitations on a sliding scale (1 point for five seconds, 2 points for 10-20 seconds, 5 points for 20+ seconds).

Points are deducted at the examiners’ discretion for repetition, stalling and grandstanding.

10 points are usually deducted for errors, lies and instances of plagiarism, unless they’re really well done, in which case bonus points could be added (depending on whether your university’s name is “University of X” or “X University”).

Questions, Answers And Points: What You Need To Know

Questions must be from the list of pre-approved questions, unless the examiners receive special dispensation from the Vice Chancellor.

If a question is not from the pre-approved list the candidate will receive a bonus point to their score (as there was no way they could prepare an answer for it in advance).

17 points are deducted for every “I don’t know” unless the candidate can justify why they don’t know, in which case 7 points will be added to the total.

Addendum: The Other Things You Need To Know

Bonus points can be awarded for answering in rhyme.

Every five minutes after the first 90 will see a decrease in score by two points, unless one of the examiners has a palindromic family name.

Otherwise, vivas longer than two hours will need to be rescored under the Alternative Viva Scoring Method (Lipra and Loof, 2019).

…actually, this method is all quite complicated…

If you really want to know how vivas are assessed at your institution, it’s probably better that you check the regulations. Chat with your supervisor or other academics from your department or faculty. Explore viva experiences with graduates from your department.

Your viva will be unique, but if you explore the likely scenarios you won’t be fooled.

Nathan

Begin With The End In Mind

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I love that expression, but find it hard a lot of the time to put it into effect. Very often I’m in the middle of something before I realise the end that I’m looking for; I’m working on something I find interesting and then see what it needs to be (or what I want it to be).

I think most PhDs don’t know what the end of their research or the end of the PhD will be like until they’re somewhere in the middle. That’s fine too. You don’t need to start preparing for the viva until you’ve submitted, but once you have a sense of what you’re aiming for you can begin to steer yourself in that destination.

  • You can think about how to make your thesis better. How can you communicate your research? How can you anticipate the needs of your audience? How can you structure your thesis well?
  • You can find out about the viva. What are realistic expectations? What are the regulations for your university? What are vivas really like?
  • You can think about what you need to be ready for the viva. What little steps can you take? What do you need to do? What would a confident you look like?

You don’t need everything all at once. You don’t need to start preparing for the viva until your thesis is done. But once you know where you’re going you can start to lay the foundations for the end of your PhD.

Begin, in the middle, with the end in mind…

Nathan

Current

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“How long will your work be seen as current?”

I don’t know how common this question is in the viva, but I think it is a fantastic question to explore in preparation.

Get a piece of paper and jot down notes for an hour. Turn the question around in many different ways.

You have to think about the history of your discipline. What’s lead up to your research? You have to reflect on the value of your thesis. You have to see what is happening in your field, and think about how your work has been received so far.

You might put an estimate on the length of time your work will be seen as novel or useful. It could be that five years from now there will be something else that occupies the scholars of your field. That’s fine. Recognise that your work is a part of the unfolding story of research.

Your work makes a contribution to the sum of human knowledge.

(it sounds grand but it’s true!)

Nathan

Debrief

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If your PhD is anything like mine – or, come to think of it, any PhD I know – it has been full of ups and downs, both at work and in your personal life. The viva marks the end of a great big part of your life. A PhD is made from triumphs and victories, mistakes and missteps, everything that has happened has either helped you get over the finish line or at least not thwarted your ambition.

You’re done! (or at least you will be once you’ve done your corrections and you’ve graduated, officially)

So: what will you take away from all of this? Not just in terms of the research contribution, but you, personally: what have you learned? How have you grown? How have you changed as a person?

By the end of my PhD I was confident that I could do big things. I believed in my talent as a mathematician and at being able to solve problems. I also knew that I didn’t want to be a mathematician any more. I’d enjoyed my PhD, but was pretty certain I’d gone as far as I could in my field. I was looking for my next challenge.

How about you?

As your PhD draws to a conclusion, make time to reflect on what it all means. You get a certificate to mark the success of your PhD. It’s up to you to debrief yourself. Figure out what you’ve learned from the endeavour, and what it means for your future.

Nathan

Two Paths Away From Failure

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Two ways to get away from failing.

You could just not try.

Failing seems like such an awful thing, best stop now and not go for it. Remove the possibility of failure. Forget all about this doctorate business. It wasn’t meant to be. It wasn’t meant for you. Because if you try and you fail… Well, that would feel terrible, right?

Or…

You could look at the viva as one more success you need to get.

Count all of the times you’ve succeeded throughout your PhD. Make a list of all of the achievements you’ve racked up. The number of times you made a difference. All of the things you’ve written in your thesis that have added something to the world. You’ve already done something amazing. The viva is just one more thing you need to do. If you’ve got this far, what could stop you succeeding in the viva?

Nathan

10 Opportunities For Sharing

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Both before and after you submit your thesis, one of the best things you can do to prepare for the viva is find opportunities to share your work.

Telling others about what you’ve done helps you think about how you explain your work. It can give you space to practise structuring your research. It can lead to questions, which then help you to think again and fill in the blanks for your audience, whether it’s one person or one hundred.

There are lots of ways you could talk or write about your research. Here are ten opportunities for sharing just off the top of my head! You can probably think of more that would be relevant for you:

  1. Give a talk, big or small, in your department or at a conference.
  2. Share your work via outreach.
  3. Go for coffee with a friend.
  4. Have a meeting with your supervisor.
  5. Write a paper and submit it for publication or preprint comments.
  6. Write a blog post summarising your progress.
  7. Send an email to a contact at another institution.
  8. Tweet something short, sweet and simple! #awesome
  9. Be a guest on a podcast about research (@PlanetPhD is a new one I found recently!)
  10. Find some friendly first-years who want to hear from someone with experience.

None of these are free: they always cost something, particularly in terms of time. Coffee with a friend might be an hour, a blog post could be a few, but a paper or a talk could be days or weeks of work.

Think of it is an investment rather than a cost. Every time you share your work, the return on the investment will be greater than what you’ve “spent”. Every opportunity you find or make will give you a chance to improve.

Nathan

A Few Sentences

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Viva prep doesn’t always feel easy. If you find it tough to get going, or you feel stuck, or you only have a little time, you can still do something small that will make a difference. Writing a few sentences could be a good way to start.

  • Write a few sentences on key authors or papers you’ve used.
  • Write a few sentences to summarise your key contribution.
  • Write a few sentences to frame the challenge you’ve undertaken.
  • Write a few sentences to reflect on how far you’ve come.
  • Write a few sentences to unpick your methods.
  • Write a few sentences about your biggest achievement.

You can write a lot more if you want to, but you can get something nice, short and valuable from even a little reflection and writing.

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