Daily viva help for PhDs
It’s true that binary questions – yes or no, true or false, A or B – could feature in a viva as a means of simply qualifying details.
It’s a false expectation to think binary questions are the dominant format of the viva though.
The viva is a discussion, not a quiz. Engaging well at yours means sharing responses to questions, not merely providing short answers.
There are lots of good reasons to write summaries of your thesis, your research or aspects of both as part of your viva preparation.
A summary can be a list of points or a page of paragraphs, written in ten minutes or drafted carefully over an hour.
A summary is not a script though. You might use a helpful question to prompt writing: there are many viva question resources on the internet that provide these. Still, your examiners are not expecting memorised responses and hyper-polished notes that you read from.
The summary helps you prepare for the viva. It’s not a script to read from during the viva.
Whatever you feel about your viva, reflect and think about what that means you have to do.
And what if you feel confident? Well, what can you do to build on that and continue to feel confident for your viva?
How you feel about your viva matters – but then you have to do something.
How do you feel? What do you need to do?
Your viva is a lot of work, both in prep and on the day.
Your viva is one day at the end of a thousand or so.
Your viva is likely to be a difficult but not insurmountable challenge.
Your viva is an event that you can feel nervous and confident for.
Your viva is yours and yours alone, unique compared to every other that’s gone before.
Your viva is similar to many other vivas that have happened (and will happen in the future).
Your viva is not the end of the PhD, but you’re getting close.
For over a decade Viva Survivors has been geared towards the PhD viva and helping people get ready, but PhD candidates aren’t the only postgraduate researchers who have a viva.
What if you’re doing an EngD or an EdD? Or an MPhil? Or an MScR? Or you’re researching towards another collection of letters?
How do the hundreds of thousands of words on Viva Survivors (and the resources, and the podcast archive) apply when you’re not doing a PhD viva? What changes? What stays the same?
I don’t know – or at least, I don’t know everything.
The basic principles of viva prep hold. The ideas of getting ready and building confidence based on your success and development hold.
But the regulations will differ, at least a little. Viva expectations might differ because the general experience of an MScR viva, for example, might not be quite the same as a PhD viva.
But still there is help out there and on Viva Survivors.
Whatever your research degree, read the regulations for your institution. Whatever you’re working towards, talk to people who have gone on the journey before you and ask them questions about what their viva was like. Take time to think about what you need to do to prepare, plan your prep and then get it done.
Whatever you do, ask for help. Whatever you do, take time to get ready. Whatever you do, share what’s helped with others when you’re done.
Then go on and do something even better, because your research degree is only one step in the journey.
What’s the upper or lower word count for my thesis?
This is an interesting question. Sometimes it’s asked in a purely practical way: someone wants to know what the regulations say. The best response I can give is suggest they read the regulations for their university and check with their supervisors for any department-specific advice.
Sometimes it’s asked because there is a deeper question waiting to be asked. Perhaps how short can my thesis be? Or maybe will my examiners prefer a long or short thesis?
These are also interesting questions, but I’d follow up with questions of my own: why do you want your thesis to be short? and why are you writing your thesis for your examiners?
Here are some better questions about words to consider as you finish writing and start preparing for the viva:
What words could you use to describe what you do well as a researcher? What words stand out when you think about what you’ve accomplished over the years of your research?
If you believe your examiners will be fair with their questions then you’ll be more likely to try to engage with them, rather than suspect a trap or harsh comment.
If you believe you can get prepared during the submission period then you’ll be more likely to feel ready when the time comes.
If you believe the mostly positive stories about viva experiences that you hear and read then you’re going to act as though your viva will be a mostly positive occasion too.
What have you heard about the viva? What do you believe about it? And how does that help you (or not)?
One more hour of reading could help you to remember that key piece of information that’s slipped your mind.
One more conversation with your supervisor might boost your confidence for meeting your examiners in the viva.
One more look through your thesis with a highlighter in hand might show you that detail you’ve been missing – or the typo you’ve missed so far!
One more of any of these might be one too many things though: there is a practical limit of how much prep you can do and how much prep you need to do.
The viva is only one more day when you have to show up and do things you have done many, many times before.
It’s good to know about what your examiners do but you don’t have to know all about them to be prepared.
At a minimum, if you don’t know much about them you can read a few of their recent papers in the weeks leading up to the viva. Then you can get a sense of who they are, what they do and what they spend their research time on.
It could be you already know this before you submit your thesis. If their work has been part of the background for your research then you might be more familiar than I’ve outlined above – and of course that’s fine too!
And similarly, it’s enough for them to be familiar with your area of research if it doesn’t correspond to everything they know and do – your examiners don’t need to be experts in your thesis focus in order to be good examiners for you.
Take ten minutes to write down any questions you really want your examiners to ask.
Take twenty minutes to write down keywords for each question to capture ideas of what you might say in response.
Take thirty minutes to sit, think and maybe write about what this is telling you.
It’s common for PhD candidates to have a sense of questions they don’t want to be asked in the viva.
Flip that feeling. What do you want to be asked?
Or, perhaps when you reflect, what do you want to share with your examiners? What would you say? And what does that mean?