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Nathan

Secret Prep

Daily Post

My friend Shaine didn’t tell any of us about his viva.

We didn’t even know he was actively preparing for it. We found out about his viva as it was happening! There was a hurried series of text messages around our group when we learned on the day. It was a shock but he had his reasons. And we still celebrated with him when it was over and done.

My typical viva prep advice would be to tell friends about your viva, ask for their help with your prep and so on. This is overridden by the greater need to make sure that your viva prep process meets your needs, preferences and circumstances.

If it’s important to you that your viva and prep time be secret then do that. And, more importantly, if you realise that something else is really important for your prep then follow that instinct too.

Prep is personal. Do what you need to do to get ready.

 

PS: You’ll find a lot more help with viva prep in the latest issue of Viva Survivors Select! The 2025 Issue collects twenty of my favourite blog posts from last year and adds two new pages of viva help – including a game that’s all about viva prep. You can find the zine here along with a few of the pages to get a sense of what the issue is like. Do pick it up if it seems helpful and you value what I share on the Viva Survivors blog 🙂 And please spread the word if you can!

Nathan

By The Ends

Daily Post

By the end of your first year you probably have a direction or goal in mind for your research.

By the end of your final year you’ve realised enough of your aims to create a thesis.

By the end of your thesis someone can appreciate the contribution that you’re making.

By the end of your viva prep you’ll feel ready for the challenge of your viva.

By the end of your viva you’ll know that you did it.

By the end of all of this hopefully you’ll have a smile on your face as you think, “What now?”

 

PS: Take a look at the latest issue of Viva Survivors Select for more reflections, practical viva help and more. The 2025 Issue collects twenty of my favourite blog posts from last year and adds two new pages of viva help. You can see a few of the pages here to get a sense of what this little curated zine is all about. Please spread the word if you can!

Nathan

Regulations & Exceptions

Daily Post

If you have a viva soon then your university has regulations for it. These are updated every few years so make sure you have read the most recent version. Pay attention to what they say about the viva process – don’t simply rely on advice and information from a well-meaning friend or supervisor.

The regulations will paint a general picture of a typical viva. They might also describe some exceptions and what those processes could be like:

  • Having more examiners;
  • Ensuring accessibility requirements;
  • When independent chairpersons are needed;
  • How to have vivas over video or hybrid vivas.

Some of these exceptions are not as exceptional as they once were. For example, video vivas might be uncommon compared to 2020 and 2021 but they are far less rare now than before the pandemic.

You might expect your viva to be different from others for many reasons. Maybe your research is explored and explained differently in your thesis. Maybe your own lived experience is not like other people you know. Maybe one of your examiners is not an academic.

Still the regulations will help. Your viva will still happen. Check the regulations, decide on if and how your viva might be exceptional and ask to get the support that you need.

Every viva is unique – and some are a little more different than others!

 

PS: I released the latest issue of Viva Survivors Select yesterday! The 2025 Issue collects twenty of my favourite blog posts from last year and adds two new pages of viva help. Please take a look at the zine and some pages here and pick it up if it seems helpful 🙂 And please spread the word if you can!

Nathan

Beginning & End

Daily Post

Expect your viva to begin with questions that help you start well.

Expect your examiners to have a plan (but don’t expect them to share it).

As you start the viva you can expect to feel nervous but the opening questions should help you move past that feeling.

And as you begin you could try to have a rhythm for engaging with questions: take a sip of water, make a note or take a breath – do something to help you pause.

 

As your viva ends, expect your examiners to ask you to leave for a little while so they can talk privately.

Expect to feel nervous then too.

Expect that when they bring you back in they’ll be telling you that you’ve succeeded!

And expect they’ll tell you that you have corrections to complete as well!

Nathan

Limited Times

Daily Post

You had limited time to research. You had limited time to write your thesis.

You’ll have limited time after submission to get ready for your viva. You’ll have limited time to take advantage of support from others and limited time to do the prep work you need to do.

At the viva you’ll have limited time to share your contribution and demonstrate your capability.

Another way to look at all this is “enough”.

For the work you needed to do you had enough time to get it done and enough time to write a thesis that was good. You have enough time to prepare and enough time to get help. At your viva you’ll have enough time to think carefully and enough time to respond to the discussion as it happens.

Time is limited at all stages of a PhD but there’s enough to succeed.

Nathan

What You Know

Daily Post

For your viva you can know what you did.

You can know what you thought about doing.

You can know why you didn’t do those things.

You can know what support your supervisor and others provided.

You can know what you decided was worth knowing.

You can know about the references that make a difference to your work.

You can know about your plans, how they changed and how you achieved your goals.

You can know why you did the work.

You can know what you wrote.

You can know what to expect at the viva.

You can know who your examiners are and what they do.

You can know what you need to do to be ready for your viva.

 

You can’t know everything. You’re not expected to anticipate every question. You can’t have read every paper. You can’t have photographic recall and you don’t need to. You don’t need to have thought about everything ahead of the viva.

What you know is enough.

Nathan

Hope & Belief

Daily Post

It’s wrong to hope for confidence at your viva but right to believe you’ll succeed.

Confidence is cultivated: you don’t just cross your fingers and hope for it. You have to do something to change how you feel.

Believing you’ll pass is sensible: the statistics show that the overwhelming majority of PhD candidates who submit a thesis succeed at the viva. It’s reasonable to believe you’ll pass too.

Don’t hope for confidence – build it up. Don’t worry about passing – work towards it.

Nathan

Impossible Vivas

Daily Post

A viva with no questions is impossible.

Equally impossible: a viva with all the questions!

It helps to recognise ahead of meeting your examiners…

  • …you won’t know how many questions you’ll be asked;
  • …you won’t know what questions you’ll be asked;
  • …you won’t know what the start of your viva will be exactly;
  • …you won’t know what they’re thinking about as they manage their side of the discussion.

And none of these things make the viva impossible for you.

You can’t be asked every question. You won’t be asked none. You can’t know what you will be asked. Rather than guess you can rehearse and prepare for being there. You can know what it’s like to be at the viva by practising. You can prepare to respond by having a mock and doing things that help you consider your work again.

There are a number of impossible scenarios for the viva. Your own experience will be much more manageable.

Nathan

A Few Thoughts On AI Viva Prep

Daily Post

As the capability of AI services has grown over the last few years I’ve been asked more often about what I think about using AI to help viva prep. I’ve been thinking a lot over the last few months about how it could be useful. Here’s where I’m at so far.

 

Let’s start with a key point: good viva prep is always an active and engaged process.

To get ready for the viva a PhD candidate needs to think, consider and engage with their work. They need to read their thesis well, annotate it, create summaries and more. They need to rehearse with other people to prepare for the reality of being in the viva.

You could upload your thesis into your AI service of choice and ask for a summary – but the value of creating a summary is that YOU think and focus. It’s not simply about having a list of bullet points: YOU have to create them.

You could ask an AI service to prompt you with questions based on your thesis – but the value of being asked a question in rehearsal is that you respond to it in real time in the way that you would in the viva.

Put simply, the value of viva prep is that YOU do the work.

There are no common viva prep tasks or activities that I think can be directly helped or improved by having an AI in the loop. As you get ready you need to think a lot to benefit from the work. You can’t offload that to something else. You need to do the thinking.

 

I’m not anti-AI. I’ve used an AI service for over a year to help me curate the Viva Survivors Select series from the blog archives. It’s been helpful to ask an imperfect-but-enthusiastic digital intern to help me explore the 3000+ posts I’ve written – and it has got lots wrong while trying to help me and doesn’t always do as I ask. Services improve but limitations remain.

So let me add a small qualifier to what I think so far: given what I understand about AI services and how they generally work – and given what I know about viva prep from over fifteen years of hands-on work in this area supporting PhD candidates – I don’t currently think there is a good use case for AI in effective viva prep.

But who knows what the future will bring?

Nathan

Options For Prep

Daily Post

Good viva prep has core activities: reading your thesis, making notes, creating summaries, checking papers and rehearsing for the viva. Every candidate needs to do these sorts of things and every candidate needs to consider how they will do them.

What are your options?

How someone prepares depends on many things:

  • How much time do you have between submission and your viva?
  • How busy are you? (or how pressured is your time?)
  • What do you need to do to get ready?
  • Are there special factors to take into consideration for your viva and viva prep?
  • And what preferences do you have for organising yourself, taking in information, annotating your work and getting help from others?

There are many possibilities and so many options generally for getting ready for the viva – even if the work itself builds on a few core activities.

Consider your options for prep when you get to submission. Sketch a few plans and see what fits best. Make sure you’re covering the core activities and meeting your needs.

That’s your best option.

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