Nathan

No More Feedback

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There’s a difference between the thoughts you want from your supervisors before and after submission.

While finishing your thesis there are all sorts of things you might want them to consider. Does it read well? Is this right? Does it communicate what I want it to? Can you spot any typos? You want their thoughts on these and other questions because you want your thesis to be as good as possible. It can’t be perfect, but you want it to be good enough.

Your supervisors’ feedback can be a valuable part of the work that you need to do.

After submission, you still need thoughts from your supervisors but the need is different. You don’t need more ideas or suggestions on how to make your thesis better. Instead you want an outsider perspective. Your methods are sound, but what other approaches are there? Your conclusions are valid, but how else might someone look at what you’ve done? Your work is good, but what other good work could someone do in this area?

You’re not looking for more feedback. You’re looking for a different perspective. Not necessarily your examiners’ perspective, but something different to get you thinking. Listening to different perspectives as part of your prep – and responding to them – can be useful practice for the viva.

Nathan

The Final Thing

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What’s the final thing you need to do before submission?

What’s the final piece of information about your examiners that will help you feel better about them?

What’s the final thing you need to know about the viva?

What’s the final question you’ll have for your supervisor?

What’s the final task you’ll do as you prepare for your viva?

What’s the final thing you’ll do on the day to help you feel ready?

Getting started isn’t necessarily always easy, but sometimes it’s as simple as doing something. Finishing isn’t necessarily always hard, but sometimes it helps to know the final thing you might cross off your list.

Nathan

Your Viva Is Not An Unknown

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You can’t know in advance what your examiners will ask for every question. You can’t know how long it will be exactly. You won’t know what parts of your thesis they think need changing, amending or updating. You can’t know how you will feel when you’re there.

But you know what it’s all about. Your thesis is a guide to what might come up. A guide doesn’t tell a person everything, but it lays out what is important. You can know many of the topics that will come up in your viva because you wrote your thesis. You can know what happens in vivas because there are regulations for your institution and expectations in the wider academic community for what vivas are supposed to be like.

You can’t know everything about your viva in advance. That doesn’t mean your viva is an unknown.

Nathan

Use Your Time

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You don’t know how much time you’ll have in your viva. However long it is, it’s not worth stressing or obsessing. The best thing you can do is use the time that you have well.

Use your time to listen, pause and collect your thoughts.

Use your time to make notes if that will help.

Use your time to ask questions to clarify an examiner’s line of thinking.

Use your time to take a break.

Use your time to engage with the discussion, respond to questions and share your research.

Don’t focus on how long or short your viva might be. Instead, focus on how you can make the most of the opportunities you have in the viva.

Nathan

Who Is At The Viva?

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In the UK there have to be at least two examiners, one internal and one external. Both are important. It’s not true that the external has the final say or is senior to the internal. Both will have read your thesis. Both will be prepared. Together they will lead the discussion in the viva and together they will determine the outcome.

An independent chair could be part of the viva process: a member of staff who will observe and confirm that the viva was fair. Some universities always insist on a chair; others require them for certain situations. If there needs to be a chair then they will be there.

You might need your supervisor at your viva. It might feel appropriate to have them be a witness to a final step of your PhD journey. You might need them to make notes about what you discuss or you might need the help of having a supporter in the room.

Or you might need them to not be there: that’s fine too!

Finally, you need to be there. You need to be present, prepared and ready to engage.

Who is at the viva? In short, everyone who needs to be.

Nathan

Getting Prep Done

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If viva prep seems hard – you’re tired, stretched, stressed, busy – then think about how you can make doing it somehow rewarding to you.

  • Can you incentivise getting it done?
  • Can you record doing it in a fun way?
  • Can you create a routine or ritual that helps you get the work done?
  • Can you include others in your prep in a useful way?

You need to prepare for your viva, but that need by itself might not be enough. What can you do to help you get it done?

Nathan

Don’t Deny Nerves

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If you feel nervous about your viva there is a reason. Don’t try to put it to one side or squash it down, because that feeling is trying to draw your attention to something.

  • If you feel nervous because you don’t feel ready, then take time to prepare for your viva.
  • If you feel nervous because of something that doesn’t seem right in your thesis, then talk to your supervisor and figure things out.
  • If you feel nervous because you don’t know what to expect then find out more!

And if you just feel nervous but can’t put your finger on why then most likely you are recognising that the viva is important. This matters to you. Still, don’t push away your nerves, but instead focus on building your confidence, a counter-feeling that will help bring your nervousness into perspective.

Nathan

Different Kinds of Mistakes

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Different kinds of mistakes require different actions in the viva.

If you find a few typos during your viva preparation you don’t need to go out of your way to mention them to your examiners.

If you find a sentence that doesn’t quite make sense you may need to bring it up if you’re talking about that chapter or topic.

If you discover a paragraph or section that is wrong for some reason, it could definitely help to pre-emptively explain what you really meant.

If your examiners ask you about something and you haven’t noticed it before the viva then you need to think carefully in the moment. That’s all. You need to stop, think and respond.

You need to be prepared to acknowledge all kinds of mistakes in the viva, but you don’t need to build up stress about them. Do what you can in preparation, but spend more time getting ready to talk about everything that isn’t a mistake. The focus in the viva is far more on what is right than what is wrong.

Nathan

Writing A Thesis Blurb

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I’m not a fan of the abstract in my thesis:

This thesis uses Kauffman skein theory to give several new results. We show a correspondence between Kauffman and Homfly satellite invariants with coefficients modulo 2, when we take certain patterns from the respective skeins of the annulus. Using stacked tangles we construct a polynomial time algorithm…

And I’ll stop there before I lose every reader of this blog for ever! I look at my thesis now and again, and whenever I read my abstract I think, “What does it all mean? Why would anyone care? Why did I care?”

Of course, abstracts are needed to share what a thesis is about. They have a place. I think it would have been helpful for me, to boost how I thought about my thesis, if I also wrote a blurb – the kind of thing you read on the back of a book or a DVD box that’s there to draw someone in.

Maybe instead of using lots of big words to say very little at all I could have said something like:

Do you like knots but don’t know how to tell them apart? I can help with that! This book describes my explorations of several ideas that explained some unsolved maths mysteries. I went further than anyone else had gone before! I didn’t quite get everything I wanted, but I got more than I thought possible when I started. Read on to find out more!

Perhaps it wouldn’t have what my examiners needed, but it could have done something to help me.

What could you write about your thesis to excite yourself? If your abstract needs a little oomph to boost your confidence, what kind of blurb could you write?

Nathan

Either/Or

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I hear a lot of people describe vivas in binary terms.

  • The viva is long or short.
  • Either you’ll love it or hate it.
  • Expect examiners to be fair or critical.
  • Questions are either easy or hard.
  • Preparation is straight-forward or lots of work.
  • You’re either nervous or confident when the day arrives.
  • Overall, the viva is either good or bad!

And of course the truth is that, generally, these either/or positions don’t capture what the viva is really like. Different people will feel different things, and rarely will the viva be one thing or the other.

My viva was four hours long and it felt like it flew by. My examiners were really fair with their questions and they had some very critical comments about the structure of my thesis.

Being nervous means that the viva is important to you, but you can be confident too if you reflect on your achievements and realise the success that you’ve made for yourself.

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