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Author: Nathan

Nathan

You Get To Have A Viva

Daily Post

It’s worth remembering, when you’ve submitted and you’re working towards your viva day, that it might not have gone this way. Despite the associated nerves and negativity that people attach to the viva, having one is not guaranteed.

You might have decided to stop pursuing a PhD. Circumstances, particularly during the last three years or so, might have made continuing with research impossible. Things might not have worked out with your supervisor, financial pressures could have been too great or your research ideas might have not developed.

But instead you did the work. You solved problems and overcame challenges. Things worked out enough. You submitted your thesis and now it’s not the case that you have to have a viva – you get to have a viva.

It’s work. It’s a challenge. It matters so it might make you nervous. But it’s a really good thing.

You get to have a viva. Remember that.

Nathan

Miskates Happen

Daily Post

I have to turn off the captions for myself when I deliver a webinar.

It might help some participants to see an AI-generated track of my words, but I can’t see them on my screen. For the most part they’re a reasonable transcript of what I’m saying; whenever I see the wrong thing transcribed in the moment it trips me up, it breaks my flow and I feel I have to do something to set it right.

But I can’t, not in that moment. Because I have something more important to do. If someone else doesn’t understand and needs to, they can ask, but I have to keep my focus on presenting.

And all of this is not all that different from the situations faced by PhD candidates in the viva and during their preparation.

If you find typos, just make a note of them. Where are they? What’s the correction?

If you find something unclear, make a note. What’s the problem? How could you make it clear?

Once you’ve made your notes, move on. Read some more, make some more notes. On to the next prep.

In the viva, acknowledge the mistake, correct it simply if you need to and then move on to the next question or next part of the discussion. There’s more important things to do than dwell on mistakes in the viva.

Nathan

Be Early

Daily Post

Be early for your viva.

Be early so you can take a breath or two and appreciate these last moments on this side of the milestone. In one moment you’re working towards your PhD, getting ready for your viva – and in another you’ve passed through the discussion, responded to all of your examiners’ questions and you’re on your way to completion.

Viva discussion can be deep and engaging, and you may not even notice the event unfolding. Afterwards you could be on a high or tired.

So be early: notice what you feel like, remember what you’ve done to get this far and take a few final breaths before you are Dr Someone.

Nathan

Motivations & Questions

Daily Post

There are three things your examiners have to do in your viva:

  • Explore your significant original contribution;
  • Unpick the hows and whys of your research;
  • Examine your capability as a researcher.

They have to do this. There’s a lot to talk about and a lot that could be brought up through the discussion, but as a starting point, consider how you would respond to these three questions:

  • Why would someone value your research?
  • How did you solve a difficult problem in your PhD journey?
  • What can you recognise as an area of growth in your ability?

Each question corresponds to a point from above; there’s more to ask, more to say and these are just starting points. But what would you say?

Nathan

Disarming Distractions

Daily Post

I need to remove distractions so that I can focus on my writing and projects.

I have to turn my email software off. Same for social media. I make sure I have drinks on my desk so I can’t use the excuse of getting up to avoid work. I wear noise-cancelling headphones and only listen to music without speech or singing.

And I always sit down with a plan so that I’m not distracted by debating with myself about “the best thing to write”!

 

When you focus on viva preparation think about the situation where you’ll be doing the work. What can you do to remove distractions? What can you do to create peace, quiet and calm for yourself?

Perhaps you need to tell people to leave you alone or give you space. Maybe you need to put headphones on or shut a door. Gather your resources first so that you aren’t tempted to get up and get more things.

And come to your preparations with a plan. Don’t decide what you’ll do in the moment, decide in advance to get rid of distractions.

Nathan

Reflecting On Your Research

Daily Post

What are the best parts of your work?

What are you most proud of?

What was a challenge that you overcame?

And what do you like to share with others about your research?

The viva is not a platform for you to simply proclaim the greatness of your research and writing, but it helps to go there with ideas of what really matters. Reflecting on your research before the viva helps to boost your confidence for talking about it with your examiners.

Your examiners don’t expect you to have all the answers. They don’t want you to read from a script or parrot sentences you’ve learned. They want to hear your most considered thoughts.

Take a little time in your viva preparations to consider what your work means and what you can share about it. What do you want to emphasise to your examiners? What matters?

Nathan

The Right Stuff

Daily Post

For your viva you need the right people in the right place at the right time.

What makes your examiners right for you could make them wrong for anybody else. You may have the opportunity to suggest names, but however they are selected they will have the right characteristics to be good examiners for you.

Only the right amount of progress can make a candidate right for writing up and their thesis right for submission. Your thesis doesn’t have to be perfect: in fact, in order to be right there probably has to be a lot of material left out.

Right? Does this all make sense? A lot of things need to be a certain way in order to create viva success: not perfect, just “right”. Fit for the purpose. Meeting the standard.

Good enough.

More than anything, these two words can emphasise that you’re doing the right thing when you go to your viva. You’ve worked enough, learned enough, done enough and are good enough.

Right?

Nathan

Rest Days

Daily Post

Rest days are important features of a viva prep plan. There’s not so much to do for viva preparation that you have to be working non-stop. It helps to take a break. Allow your mind to consider things from afar and mull over ideas.

Also: just rest.

Take time off from looking at your thesis, thinking about your examiners and wondering what will happen at your viva. It could help to look ahead and plan your rest; tidy up your responsibilities so that you can really take a break.

More than anything, take time for yourself: the knowledgeable, capable and hard-working researcher with their viva in the near future.

Sounds like someone who could use a day off.

Nathan

Invest In Prep

Daily Post

Viva prep doesn’t cost you twenty or thirty hours. You don’t simply spend all those hours on a task. You invest your time to be ready.

You invest your time in preparation to create a better situation in your viva and a better you for that situation.

Verbs matter. Invest rather than spend your time to be ready for your viva.

Nathan

Boss Music

Daily Post

Video game music has come a long way from my childhood in the 1980s. Beeps and boops have been replaced by orchestral compositions that rival classical composers and the biggest movies. The scale, variety and sheer power of some video game scores is astonishing.

I really like it when music for boss battles is different to the general music and soundscape for the rest of the game. Some games use different music for different bosses, usually with great significance – and some even distinguish different phases of the same fight!

(this piece of music from the sublime Hades springs to mind)

Examiners are not the final bosses of your PhD journey and you’re certainly not there to fight them! But one connecting element between them and video game boss music is that there is a change of pace. A different challenge. More focus. More urgency. A greater need to do well and a limited circumstance to do it.

You already know everything you need to know. You’ve completed many challenges to get to the viva. As you prepare, breathe and think, “What else? What am I bringing to this? What else do I need?”

And as music is a fantastic catalyst for action and emotion, consider what music could help you as you prepare. What could you listen to in order to feel calm? To feel happy? To give you focus? What could you listen to and feel more confident?

(this piece of music from the sublime Hades springs to mind!)

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