Daily viva help for PhDs
Thesis done? Submitted?
Take at least two weeks off.
Take two weeks away from reading your thesis, making notes or trying to unpick what all that work has been about. There is plenty of time to prepare for the viva. If you feel like you must do something then check recent journals and stimulate your brain with some new ideas.
You don’t need to keep going with your thesis. In fact, you’ll probably see things with more clarity when you get some distance from your work.
My sister got me some Story Cubes for my birthday last month. I’d played with some before, but never had a set to call my own. They’re great for playing little story-making games and just generally for helping ideas along.
Last week as I was having a little fun they fell into the following sequence:
My mind jumped to the viva straight away!
PhD candidates spend a long time learning enough to write their thesis. Things are going well, through good times and bad, then they look ahead and all they see is questions coming their way! Questions in the viva, questions about the viva, questions and questions and questions… But help is at hand. There’s lots of support. The end is a happy one.
People look for patterns. We all carry mindsets of what we know or believe to be true. We tell a story based on what we’ve seen before. Even if you have some doubts about the viva, about the process, about how best to prepare – think about what you know from your research. Think about how you got to this point.
Think about your story.
Postscript: I kept playing with the Story Cubes, and this was the next arrangement that came up…
I’m glad this doesn’t tell a viva story!
This post on small projects has been in my mind for several years. It’s worth a read! I like the idea that it can be both more productive and more effective to work on creating small things rather than undertaking massive endeavours. For example, I see Viva Survivors as a series of small projects under one umbrella, rather than one big behemoth.
I’ve been casting my mind around for a while on other small projects for the site, and at the time of writing have the following in my to-do queue:
Small projects are manageable. Even if you don’t have time to work on something immediately, you can see most of the parts and see where the challenges are. It’s the opposite of most research projects, where often you can’t appreciate everything until you’re already in it.
Viva prep can be a series of small projects, and none of them have to be over-taxing to complete. Reading your thesis and marking it up in a useful way is a small project. Creating summaries to draw out your thoughts is a couple of small projects. A mock viva or presentation to give you opportunity to think and talk is a small project. It all helps.
For your thesis, you had to think big. Maybe for your viva prep it’s useful to think small.
A pass in the viva is not typically no strings attached. Most candidates have to complete some kind of corrections. These can mean different requirements at different institutions.
You can’t know what corrections you might get in advance, but you can find out what conditions they’ll have to be done under. How long is given to complete them? Who do you have to get approval from? When corrections are complete, how long do you have in order to get your final, complete thesis submitted? How long from then until you’ll have graduated?
Find out now.
It could be that you need a little help from others to get ready for the viva. Help with thinking and talking; questions about process and experience; maybe even proofreading or practical on-the-day logistics.
You have to defend your work solo, but there really are lots of ways others can help you prepare. Get clear in your mind about what you need, ask and explain why (if you need to), and be prepared to compromise.
It could also be the case that you see a friend who needs help. A candidate who needs someone to talk to; a colleague who needs someone to listen; a friend who has a problem that they can’t see past.
It’s OK to ask for help when you need it; it’s good to offer help when you can.
There’s a lot of empty margins in a thesis. A lot of space free in headers and footers. And in the centre of most pages a LOT of words.
A thesis is a summary of at least three years of research. An embedding of thoughts into words. It’s taken time to get it all just so.
When you’re reading it all back, remember that a few more words can make a difference:
Annotation helps. Don’t be afraid to add a few more words.
A thesis has to have something new. It’s not just a collection of words. Ideas, facts, interpretation – whatever you could summarise it as, there’s something new in there. Something that wasn’t there before your PhD. Maybe something that could never have been done until now. Maybe something that could never have been done until YOU came along.
Don’t undersell the contribution you’ve made. It only exists in your thesis because of your efforts. As you prepare for the viva, take time to unpick the novelty of your work.
After my viva I waited in my office for seventeen minutes for the result.
Those seventeen minutes felt longer than the four hours. And then it was over.
There are thousands of questions you could be asked in the viva!
…but you won’t be asked most of them.
Remember: you only have to answer one at a time.
To get to submission, to get to the viva, you have to do the work. It’s no accident. You must have put in the hours and you can only do the work if you’re sufficiently skilled.
How else could you get so far? How else could you explain that you are where you are?
You’ve done the work and done the work well. Keep going. Keep succeeding.