Nathan

A Little Pause, Here And There

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A few seconds to make sure you’ve heard and understood something.

A few seconds to make a note.

A few seconds to check a detail.

A few seconds to be sure your examiner has stopped talking.

A few seconds that are a little awkward over Zoom.

A few seconds that feel like a lot more than a few seconds.

Or a few seconds that might need to be a moment or two, to really check something over.

A few seconds pause here and there are needed in the viva. Pauses are essential for getting your thoughts in order, for determining what’s next, for checking that everything is OK, or for just thinking and appreciating what’s going on.

And you’re not the only person who might need to pause in the viva.

When you take all those little pauses together they’re still just a small part of the viva.

Maybe one way to help you be fine with pauses in your viva is to think of them as a lot of little things that help the big things go well.

Nathan

Tomorrow’s Story

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Tomorrow is the best time to start building your confidence for the viva – assuming you didn’t do it yesterday and you’re busy today.

Tomorrow, take five minutes to write down a few thoughts about something that you’ve achieved in the course of your PhD. Capture a result, an idea, a paper, a chapter, a skill that you’ve developed, a knowledge-based competence – something you’ve done that has helped you get to where you are.

And keep going every day. Five minutes of reflection every day, building up a short story collection of the last few years. A collection of little story fragments that point to you being good at what you do. A story that, when combined, shows you can be confident you’re ready for your viva.

Nathan

Keep It Simple

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Thinking about how to prepare for the viva stresses some candidates. There can be lots of factors at play.

I have work, I have kids, I have so little time, I’m tired, I’m stressed, what to do, when to start, where to focus and so on.

I can’t answer every possible concern, but my advice generally comes down to four short thoughts:

  1. Keep it simple.
  2. Set regular prep times.
  3. Complete small tasks.
  4. Ask for support.

Engaging with prep doesn’t need to be much harder than that.

To date, there’s probably over 101 posts on this blog about viva prep. I’ve explored this topic a lot, but you don’t need to do 101 things to be ready for your viva.

Keep it simple. Cut through stress and worry with something as simple as a to-do list. Keep taking small steps to get to where you need to be.

Nathan

My Story

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Where do I begin?

Do I start with my teenage dreams of being a teacher? How I left those behind when my father died? Or do I start with telling you about my undergraduate degree in maths and philosophy?

How much should I tell you of my Masters, or why I didn’t continue working with my first supervisor from there?

When I talk about my PhD, should I tell you about the big results from my thesis? And if I do, do I leave out the miserable months of my second year when I could seem to make no headway? Should I tell you that those miserable months returned in my third year too?

What are the lessons that stand out? What are the moments I should share? What are the details that you need from me?

How did I get here? It depends on the audience. It depends on my mood. It depends on the story.

And in some ways it doesn’t matter at all.

 

A PhD story – or a viva story – can be useful. Listening to someone else’s journey is valuable; trying to tease out nuggets of experience and insight can be really helpful in finding things to try for oneself.

Far more useful though is the story you tell yourself about yourself.

I told myself I was lucky during my PhD, and it made me feel that I hadn’t worked for what I had.

Afterwards, I realised one day that I was fortunate – and that change of word helped me realise the work I had done, the skillset I had built and the confidence I could base on it.

My story? It’s good. It’s true. It’s changed over the years and stayed true.

What’s your story? Get it right, and it’ll help you through the end of your PhD, through your viva and beyond.

Nathan

Unanticipated, Not Unmanageable

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Every viva is “unique, not unknown” – always different, but following patterns from regulations, expectations and even traditions within departments or universities.

We can also say with confidence that a viva could be “unanticipated, not unmanageable” in how it occurs. A viva could deviate from expectations in a way that no-one could expect from the outset: a question could be unpredicted, a comment could seem random, a line of discussion could even be uncomfortable.

All of which would be unanticipated – but not unmanageable. Given the time a candidate would spend working on their PhD, investing in their development and getting ready, the viva could be surprising, more than the expected challenge, but still within the capabilities of the candidate.

Unique, not unknown. Unanticipated, not unmanageable.

Which is the short way of saying that you can have reasonable expectations, and rise to the challenge of anything you can’t foresee.

Even shorter: you can do it.

Nathan

The 200 Reference Problem

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“I have 200 references in my bibliography! How can I remember all those details?! What do I do if my examiners ask me about one of them??”

The 200 reference problem is not actually a problem. It’s a not-irrational worry linked to being perfect, the desire to know everything and be ultra-competent, but isn’t something to invest attention in.

How can I remember all those details? You can’t. Don’t try. Look for the most important references and do your best with those. It’s likely you’ve highlighted them in your thesis, but creating an edited bibliography could help you too.

What if my examiners ask me about one of these references? If your examiners ask you about one you can’t remember off-hand, you can check your thesis. It’s there with you in the viva to support your discussion. So check it. But it’s far more likely that your examiners will ask you about something important, something you know, than a random paper buried deep in the seventeenth page of your bibliography.

The 200 reference problem isn’t a problem. It’s a nudge to look again at your references and figure out how to use them as part of getting ready.

Nathan

X-Ray Your Thesis

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You need to read your thesis to get ready for the viva. Then look deeply. Really look. What do you see?

  • What are the structures of your chapters like?
  • How do your chapters connect?
  • What are the key points in your work? (and why?)
  • Where are the safe parts you are absolutely sure of?
  • Where are the tricky parts you need to read again?

Scanning your work isn’t sufficient to be ready for your viva, but it helps you get there. Looking at and analysing the larger “bones” of your thesis is better than trying to commit hundreds of pages of words to memory.

Nathan

Space To Feel

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In my writing and webinar work I try to help and to give perspective on the viva. I try not to share things like a great to do list, but also know that some people I engage will treat things that way:

If I do X then Y will happen and everything will be fine.

Everything probably will be fine. Things will probably work out the way you want and you’ll have the outcome you’re looking for – but the journey there might not be smooth, navigating the bumpy road of emotions, changes and endings along the way.

This has been hammered home to me in the last year as I’ve delivered webinars.

In a seminar room, people tend to have their public faces on. They could be unsure, they could be curious but they smile – there’s a mask in place. In a webinar, with cameras off and chat windows open, people talk more freely. Questions become longer than could be squeezed on a Post-it Note, and real emotions flow into the statements that people make:

I’ve not thought about how things are going to change… The pandemic hasn’t given me the chance or the pause until today…

I’m angry because of how my submission and viva will be so different than I had imagined!

I’m crying a little as no-one, not my supervisor or department, have told me that I’m good or talented before…

These aren’t direct quotes, but they are representative of what people have told me in just the last few months. Perhaps it’s been there in the background all along, and it took the shift to webinars for me to recognise it in candidates. Maybe it’s a more recent emergence brought on by the pressures of the last year.

In either case, if you want a to do list for getting ready, here’s my update: read your thesis, make notes, rehearse for the viva, boost your confidence…

…and make space to feel.

Reflect, not just on your talent to help build your confidence, but on where you are, how you got there and how you feel about all this. Happy, sad, angry, excited, scared – however you feel, make space for it. Unpick it a little maybe. See what you need to do.

Nathan

Tested By The Viva?

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“Test” doesn’t seem big enough to think about the way you have to engage in the viva.

A test feels like a little thing, a one-time intervention where you are measured, checked and analysed. That’s not the viva. Maybe we could consider the viva being like a car’s MOT: a check that you are researcher-ready. You have everything in place and are ready to run as a researcher, if you wanted to, but still that wouldn’t feel quite right.

Better to say you’re examined in the viva. You’re challenged by the viva. You defend your work in the viva.

But it’s not enough to say that you’re simply tested by it. The viva is not so great and big as to be the most important thing you will ever do, but it’s not so small as to be simply a test.

Nathan

Play Time

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I’ve shared a few posts for being playful in getting ready for the viva before, but nothing so comprehensive as Professor Pat Thomson’s post from March on “ten playful viva preparation activities“.

I love all of her suggestions, but the first particularly resonates given my general philosophy on getting ready for the viva – and my recent reflections on the end of my PhD:

Write a love letter to your Doctor self, listing all of the expert doctoral qualities and competencies they have. Write a break up letter to your student self, saying why you lived with them for so long, and explaining why it’s now time to leave them behind.

It would have been really helpful if Past-Nathan had taken some time to write a few letters to myself. I think I’d have felt better about how I was finishing. Working through that transition as I was coming to the end might have felt a little smoother.

There’s lots of great ideas in Pat’s list, so do go and check it out. Consider: how else could you play your way to prepared?

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