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Tag: ask your allies

Nathan

Friends & Colleagues

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Part of being ready for your viva involves knowing your stuff: you need to read your thesis, you need to make notes and you need to rehearse for the viva.

Part of being ready involves knowing what others know: you need to talk with friends and colleagues about how they got ready, discover what their viva experience was like and explore what advice they have for you and your preparations.

Your friends and colleagues are a small part of your prep but don’t forget to ask. They’ll be happy to help, if they can.

Nathan

Asking For Help

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It’s better to ask for help before the viva when you know what you need help with. Reflecting on the problem or gap in knowledge can highlight who it’s best to ask.

It’s easier to ask for help before the viva if you do it with plenty of notice. People are busy! The earlier you ask the more likely they are to make time to help you.

It’s more effective to ask for help before the viva if you give yourself plenty of time to put that help into effect. Don’t rush yourself by leaving things.

And more generally, it’s simply better to ask for help before the viva than to try to do it all yourself. You might not need a lot but you’ll feel better for accepting help from your supporters around you.

Nathan

Friendly Questions

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Around submission time reach out to your friends and colleagues in your department.

For the particular friends who might know a little about your research, ask for time: can they listen to you talk about your work? Would they have an hour in their schedule to get coffee and give you a mini-viva? Or perhaps get a group together and listen to a seminar?

For friends and colleagues who have had their viva, ask for information: what was their viva like? What happened? How did they feel? Consider what you might need to know about to help you get a good sense of what vivas are like or to put your mind at ease. Ask for details.

Who do you know who could help you?

Nathan

Getting Help

Daily Post

Need help for your viva? Here are seven tips:

  1. Know what you need. It’s easier to get help if you can appreciate the gap that help helps with! If you’re not sure, reflect and try to put it into words. Is it a gap in knowledge? Is it a practical gap?
  2. Ask the right person. Supervisors can provide different support to your Graduate School.
  3. Ask early! Most people are happy to help but everyone is busy. If you know you’re going to need something, ask sooner rather than later so you can arrange a good time.
  4. Stay positive. It’s not wrong to be nervous about the viva, but horror stories and bad experiences really are rare. Don’t look for the rare negatives at the expense of the many positive experiences.
  5. Check advice. Most advice shared is done so with good intentions, but it might not feel right for you. Check with another source if you can. If advice seems unhelpful – because it is grounded in a certain research discipline or uses specific equipment – see if you can broaden it out to a deeper point.
  6. Don’t wait! I’ve seen many times over the years where people umm and ahh before they get support. If you need help, ask for help.
  7. Subscribe to Viva Survivors. There is a new post on this site every single day. You can get it sent to your inbox for free, no spam, no pop-ups: this is the blog of daily viva help 🙂

You have to respond to questions in the viva by yourself, but you don’t have to do everything alone when getting ready. Get the help you need.

Nathan

At A Distance

Daily Post

Ask for help when you’re getting ready for your viva. Talk to your friends and colleagues in your department. Get them to listen to you talk about your work or ask about their experiences. Get the benefit of their help!

…but what do you do if you don’t have a PGR community in your department? Or what do you do if you are a distance PhD and you don’t have close contacts in your department because it’s rare for you to be there?

If you are in a position where you don’t have close contacts for some reason there is still a lot of viva prep you can do by yourself. If you need advice or want to know about viva experiences you might have to reach out to others.

Start by emailing and introducing yourself. It’s likely that there are even a few people from your department or a related institution who you’re acquainted with. Start with them.

Explain your situation. Tell people when your viva is and what you’re looking for. Ask for advice if you think they might have it and be clear about the kind of support you’re looking for if that’s what you need.

You might be at a distance and you might be able to do a lot of prep by yourself – but that doesn’t mean that you are alone as you get ready.

Nathan

Advice = Options

Daily Post

If you’re finishing your PhD then you will know a lot of people who have advice for you (sometimes whether you want it or not).

Friends, colleagues, supervisors, researcher-development staff, random internet people with their daily blogs… How do you decide who to listen to and what to do, particularly when it’s for something as important as getting ready for your viva?

First, consider the source: do they have experience, knowledge or understanding of what they’re talking about? Or are they just repeating what they’ve heard on the grapevine?

Second, consider the context: is the advice specific or vague? Did you ask for it or was it just offered? Does it meet your needs?

Third, consider your situation: can you put this advice into practice? Do you feel that it will be of benefit?

Let’s be charitable and say that any advice you’re offered is, in some way, well-intentioned.

Advice gives you options: it gives ready-made ideas for what you could do, but you might need something different. You don’t have to accept it. You can say thank you but leave it to one side. You could be inspired to do your own thing and make your own option.

Ask for advice, listen to advice but make sure the option you take fits your needs and circumstances.

Nathan

Ask Your Peers

Daily Post

Where peers are your friends, colleagues, acquaintances and whatever other titles you can think of!

Ask about their vivas. Ask about their experiences. Ask what they know about the viva.

Ask them what they did to get ready and if they have any advice (but only if they will offer suggestions and not instructions).

Ask them to help you if it’s appropriate.

Seek help now. Offer help later.

Nathan

Surprising Questions From Candidates

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I’m enjoying a nice summer break, but while I do I am missing sharing viva help in webinars. Before 2020 I’d already delivered viva sessions and workshops for a decade.

With all of that combined experience – as you might imagine – I’ve been asked a LOT of questions about the viva. From the hyper-specific to the incredibly-vague and the super-practical to the ultra-hypothetical, thirteen years later I’m still asked questions that I’ve never been asked before.

And I’ve been asked more than a few questions that really surprise me. For example:

  • Can I have a break if the viva is long? Yes, in fact you can always have a break!
  • Can I take my thesis with me to check details? Yes, you’re expected to have it with you!
  • Will I know who my examiners are before my viva? Yes, this is arranged well before the date!
  • Will my examiners fail me if I forget something or don’t know something? No!
  • How mean will my examiners be? They won’t be, that’s not what they’re there to do!

Sometimes, when I’m asked a question, the person apologises, “Sorry, this might be a stupid question-” and I always cut them off. There are no stupid questions when you’re looking for information or trying to learn more, particularly at a webinar about the PhD viva.

There are no stupid questions, but there are questions that are surprising to me.

I’m surprised that some of what people don’t know about the viva isn’t just shared by supervisors. I’m surprised it’s not passed on through peer groups. I’m surprised that candidates don’t know that they can have a break, for example, or that examiners aren’t trying to be mean.

But they’re not stupid questions. I’m always glad to make a space that could help.

I would encourage you, to help your communities and culture, do pass on what your viva was like. Share to help build up the general sense of what to expect.

Nathan

Under It

Daily Post

Viva prep doesn’t take much, space it out, don’t overstress yourself by trying to do too much in too short a time-

Good advice but if you are really under time pressure, if you just feel stress because of your work or your life, and if the thought of adding more to that feels terrible, the words above won’t help.

If you are overwhelmed you still need to prepare. If you are overwhelmed it might be difficult to think straight. Very simply then:

  • Ask for help.
  • Find a little time each day and do something small.
  • Read your thesis.
  • Make notes.
  • Talk about your work – respond to questions if you can.
  • Seriously: ask for help!

You’re the only person who can respond in the viva, but until then you have a lot of people around you who would support you practically if they knew you needed it. You have work to do to get ready for your viva – but you are not alone.

Little things add up. Your supporters will help. And it will get better.

Nathan

Predicting Failure

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It’s clear that most PhD vivas results in success.

Ask your graduate school. Look online. Talk to people who have been through the process. The vast majority succeed. Corrections are part of the process and not a failure or setback. The process of doing a PhD, submitting a thesis and having a viva is not perfect, but it tends to work.

So accurately predicting success as the outcome of submission and the viva is simple.

Candidates succeed at the viva for very similar reasons, even when their research and theses could be very different. They succeed because they did the work, they wrote a good enough thesis and became a capable researcher. In the viva, they were able to demonstrate everything they needed to in order to pass.

 

Accurately predicting failure is much, much more challenging. Candidates pass for very similar reasons. They fail for very different, personal ones. It’s hard to know in advance.

Worry and nervousness isn’t enough. The vast majority of candidates succeed and most of them are in some way nervous about their viva! If you genuinely feel concerned that you’ve missed something or that something isn’t good enough, talk to someone. Talk to your supervisor. Talk to your graduate school. Talk to friends and colleagues and anyone who could help and ask them, “Do I really have a problem here? Am I just a little nervous? What can I do?”

Get help if your thoughts are turning to failure. It’s extremely unlikely, but finding a way that you can work towards success is much better than trying to assess how likely it is that you’re headed for failure.

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