Daily viva help for PhDs
Ask your supervisors what they think about your examiners, your work and vivas in general.
Ask friends who have had their viva what they think you should do to prepare, what their viva was like and how they felt about it.
Ask friends who haven’t had their viva about your work, your field, and generally anything you think will help.
You can always ask for opinions, but remember you get to choose what to act on.
Can you be overprepared for the viva? I’m not sure what that would look like.
Can you waste time on activities that don’t really contribute much to your viva preparedness? Sure.
Can you focus so much on prep that you start to stress yourself out? Definitely.
Perhaps the best question to start exploring this topic is “How will you know you’re prepared?”
Set some criteria. Figure out tasks that will help meet them. Do the work.
Be prepared.
In The Wizard Of Oz, Dorothy’s friends all thought they were missing something.
The Scarecrow didn’t have a brain, the Tin Man lacked a heart and the Lion had no courage. Dorothy takes them to see the Wizard, thinking that a great and powerful man like him will be able to give them the qualities they lack. Ultimately though, he shows them there is nothing he can give that they didn’t already have. All he gives them are symbols that recognise what was there.
Those qualities were there because they had the opportunity to show them through their adventures. They had to do something to demonstrate their intelligence, their love, their bravery, but after years of doubt they couldn’t see they had those qualities. They had to have the symbol and someone to point it out to them.
There are two Wizards in your viva. They can’t magically give you a PhD. Their questions give you the opportunity to demonstrate what you can do, something that you’ve been doing for a long time.
The curtain is pulled back and the truth is there. There’s no magic, but that’s no problem. You already have everything you need.
There are lots of things I don’t know about the viva.
I don’t know if there’s any great differences between the vivas of part-time and full-time PhDs.
I don’t know how well vivas over Skype work compared to vivas in person.
I don’t know what percentage of people submit a thesis-by-publication.
I don’t know all of the regulations for all of the universities in the UK. (but I’m working on it!)
And I don’t know what percentage of candidates fail their viva, because universities are very reluctant to share that sort of data.
I have theories or ideas about all of these; hunches based on incomplete information, or ideas about how to get more stats. I’d like to explore these topics and many others, I just need to find the time to do it.
But the information is out there.
On smaller scales, your personal scale, the information is out there. There are regulations for your institution. You have a supervisor who can help shape your expectations. There are graduates you can talk to about viva experiences.
Figure out what you don’t know about the viva, then get to work finding out more.
(and I’ll do the same!)
I meet a lot of PhD candidates who walk around with a strange indeterminate state attached to their future viva. They think of their viva as pass/fail, not two possible outcomes but a strange quantum state. Until they come out of the other side and know the result, this puts them in a strange too, prone to stress and anxiety.
The outcome of the viva might feel uncertain as it gets closer. You have to have the viva to confirm what your examiners think of your work and of you – but if you’ve got this far, why would the outcome be in doubt? What problems still exist that make the outcome pass/fail? Why do you have doubts?
Explore what’s keeping you in that state. Try to build a good new story for your viva. It’s almost certainly a pass: not because of tradition or statistics or some theory, but because you can’t get this far without doing something good and without being good yourself.
Put pass/fail to one side, and think about what you need to do to change your state.
Remember at the end of your PhD – after the viva is done, after the corrections are finished, when you can breathe – take a moment to pause.
Whatever you do afterwards – whether you’re returning to a role you’ve had before, continuing with research in some form, going on to some new challenge – take time to unpack what you’ve got from your PhD.
Whatever comes next, you can meet that challenge in a new way.
Whatever comes next, you have talent that you didn’t have before.
Whatever comes next, you can draw on your experience, your grit and your commitment to getting something big done.
Your PhD is a big deal. Now go do the next big deal.
Reading and re-reading your thesis in preparation for the viva could show passages that don’t quite make sense.
You could read a sentence and know what you meant, but also know that the sentence doesn’t communicate it fully. You may even find a paragraph that leaves you scratching your head…
…what does this mean? What was I trying to say?…
…and while you might not feel good about finding something unclear, you don’t have to feel too bad about it either. It’s unlikely you’ve found something that would disqualify your thesis or you. You just need to clear out the vague words before you meet your examiners.
You can’t submit a pre-corrected version of your thesis but you could:
There’s a lot you can do to make vague words more clear. Exploring is always better than just hoping your examiners won’t notice.
Lists can be a good way to start reflections and summaries. I’ve previously shared Top Ten Top Fives and Ten More Top Fives as prompts to get candidates thinking about the best of their research. They can be a nice way to highlight valuable aspects of your PhD ahead of the viva.
But can we find something useful in taking another point of view? Looking at the negative or the worst aspects? Let’s see!
Some of these might seem silly but remember: this is the start of a reflection or summary.
After you list these details, keep going. Ask why. Ask how. Ask what you learned from your mistakes. Think about how you overcame your challenges. Why were those papers bad? How would you improve your thesis?
Simply dwelling on the negative isn’t often helpful, but you can use it as a springboard to something great.
If it helps you to think of the viva as a one-shot, once-in-a-lifetime super-mega-event then keep going.
If that motivates you then stay motivated and do what you can to get ready and be present with your examiners.
But if thinking that way leaves you stressed out, then figure out a new story to tell about your viva. You don’t have to downplay the importance, but you can remind yourself you got this far by working hard and being good at what you do (there’s no other explanation).
The viva is a big day, maybe a challenging day, but it’s just one day. It comes after many other challenging days of your PhD.
In your viva, remember:
Every question you get is because of something you’ve done.
All of your answers are because of something you’ve done too.