Daily viva help for PhDs
Your viva prep won’t take all that long. A pause on the day won’t be more than a few seconds. Whatever length you anticipate for your viva it will be completed very quickly – especially if you compare it to the rest of your PhD.
All of it will be finished much sooner than you think; prepare for it all carefully and you can enjoy it in the brief moments you’re engaged with the viva process.
I enjoy seeing viva success shared on Twitter. It’s fun to see people tagging posts #PhinisheD or #PhDone. I like seeing people celebrate their hard work, and others joining in to acknowledge the dedication and effort that goes into a PhD.
I smile sadly though when I see someone say that they “got lucky”. They “got past their examiners”. They scraped corrections or owe all their PhD success to things “just working out”.
There are parts of a PhD that can be attributed to good fortune – when a candidates works hard and that work pays off. But they’re not lucky. They’ve not scraped by. They’ve worked. They’ve stayed determined and developed themselves. Especially considering the times we’re living through, if you finish your PhD you’re not lucky: you earned it.
Consider the words you use to describe your success. The words you use to describe all the stages of your PhD journey have an impact. If you consider yourself simply lucky then you take something away from the talent, work and time you’ve invested – and ultimately you can take something away from the self-confidence you could build from all of that.
The viva is an oral exam at the end of the PhD. You submit a written thesis based on your research in advance. Typically two examiners, one internal and one external, will read your thesis carefully. In the viva they facilitate a discussion with you.
The viva is different for every candidate but there are common expectations. Most candidates pass. Most candidates are asked to make amendments to their thesis.
Nervousness is common, but only a symptom of how important the viva is. Candidates can prepare and rightly feel confident of their success given their experience, work, talent and knowledge.
I am sometimes asked very simple questions about what the viva is and what happens. I make assumptions sometimes about what someone might know, and get puzzled looks about certain details. The three paragraphs above are my attempt to share “the basics” in 100 words. What do you think?
An examiner could gently challenge you on why you didn’t use a certain method. Or they might wonder what would happen if you did X instead of Y. What if you had tested for this instead of that, and so on.
It’s reasonable to expect that kind of a question in the viva. It’s not unreasonable to say, “I’ve not considered that before,” or perhaps, “I don’t know, I’ve not thought about that…”
…but it’s better to say, “Let me think about that now,” and then consider and give the best response that you can.
It might not be the full picture. It might not be an answer. It could be that you can’t say everything you might want to. But for any question or line of discussion that you’ve not considered before, you can consider it now.
Take the time. Show what you know, show what you can do. If an examiner has asked you a question, it’s not to trick you or trap you: they’re giving you an opportunity to demonstrate something.
Not considered it before? Consider it now, then talk.
Five years ago today I ran my first ever independent workshop.
I was so excited!
It was a big step: to go from being invited by universities to meet PhD candidates, now instead I was inviting them to meet me. I’ve done that a lot in the last year over Eventbrite and Zoom, but to hire a venue, to advertise, to think about everything that I would want or need if I were a participant – this was a really big stretch for me then.
It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun.
One of the things I was most delighted about, aside from the great venue that I found and the four people who took a chance to come to the event, was making goody bags. I wanted to give everyone who came a bag packed with everything they would need to help them get ready for the viva – and a few things that they didn’t need, but which would maybe give them a smile.
I made a print run of the books I had written, and gave ebook codes too; I designed and published a new guide to getting ready for the viva; I supplied stationery that would help, notebooks – plus a big bar of dark chocolate and a tote bag to carry it all in.
I loved putting all of this together – most of the contents were a surprise to the participants on the day, and the looks of delight at the goody bags I gave were some of my highlights of 2016.
Which leads me to ask three questions, two for you and one for me.
Your viva could feel a bit uncomfortable in some ways. It could be there’s parts of your research you would rather not talk about. Or you’re nervous about unexpected questions. The fear of going blank and forgetting something could make you a little anxious.
Not all of these things are within your control, either the possible event or your response, but there is plenty you can do to help make your viva a more comfortable experience.
You can’t control all of your feelings about your viva, but you can do a lot to help how comfortable you feel.
Viva prep is needed to help a candidate be ready for the viva. We could say that if you start your prep three weeks before your viva, then after ten days or so you’re halfway to being ready.
But when you think about it, you might do more work in the week immediately preceding your viva. So then being half-ready skews more to the days just before your viva, when you’re working more intently.
Or maybe it’s most useful to consider: viva prep is spread over several weeks at most, whereas the real work of the PhD takes several years.
Viva prep is a focussed period with one goal, making sure that you are ready for the viva – but by the time you start that prep, you are definitely more than halfway to your goal.
I keep idea books to help manage my creative process for the blog. I’ve worked through five volumes of these small books over the last couple of years, and every time I fill one I transfer unused ideas across.
There are ideas that I’ve had now for a long time and I don’t know what to do with them:
Some of these ideas really amuse me – I just don’t know what to do with them. Others are ideas that I keep returning to but know they still need more work. I have hope but am slowly coming to the conclusion that I might never write the great viva-related crossword puzzle!
Despite not using these ideas, good and bad, I’ve written a lot for this blog. And despite not using all of your ideas, you will have done a lot for your research and thesis. You can’t do everything. Your examiners don’t expect you to do everything.
Coming to the end of your PhD, to submission, the viva or completion – at some point it helps to sit back and consider what you have not done. And as you do so remember that you have accomplished a lot. Accept that you might not ever achieve some of your research goals, that some projects’ potential might go unrealised.
You will still have done enough. You will still have proved yourself.
In the last few months I’ve been asked the following many times at webinars: is it acceptable to tell my examiners that “lockdown(s) slowed me down when I was doing my research” if I’ve had to change my plans or not been able to accomplish as much as I wanted?
And my response would be, “Of course!”
If over the last year or so your work has had to change direction, or if you’ve had to do less in some way, then it’s fair for you to emphasise that. We live in exceptional times – your PhD has been completed in exceptional circumstances.
It’s fair to tell your examiners about the challenges you’ve faced in your viva. Beforehand, consider how you can best communicate that. How personal do you want to be? What details do you want to share? How can you communicate the paths that you would have taken? And how do you share what steered your choice in the new directions you had to go?
Last March I asked for examiners and PhD graduates to share their experiences of being part of a video viva. Lots of generous people shared their stories, observations and advice. A consistent detail – from the examiner perspective – was that video vivas tended to be shorter than in-person vivas. They were a little more formal, but due to the medium they were more focussed and completed more quickly.
As 2020 continued and became 2021, I heard more recent graduates describe their pandemic viva experiences. Long vivas over Zoom and Meet, three-and-a-half hours, four hours or more! The assumed explanation was that as no-one needed to travel to participate in the viva, examiners could give more time to the discussion in the viva. There was nothing negative seen in any of this – other than the amount of time spent in a video-meeting!
Are these long video vivas outliers? Possibly. Not every candidate shares their story, and of the handful I’ve heard there would be hundreds more I have no details of. It’s reasonable to expect that there would be differences in the viva over a video chat. Length of time is one aspect I could definitely see changing compared to the previously “typical” viva.
Some expectations remain true though. Examiners will be prepared. The candidate will be too. The viva is being done for the same reasons. The candidate has done the same work as if it was in-person. The outcome is likely to be the same, even if the process has changed.
In-person or over video, expect that you will have done everything you need to be ready to pass your viva.