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Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2025: Surviving

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It’s the last day of 2025 and my last day to share some of my favourite posts of 2025.

The blog is called Viva Survivors, so we have to have posts about surviving!

I also have to shout out These Interesting Times, a post from March that looked back at the last five years. How have you made it this far? What helped you manage to keep going in difficult circumstances throughout your PhD journey and particularly over the last five years?

 

Finally for 2025, if you’re looking for some more thoughts on surviving then take a look at The Survival Issue, the most recent curated collection of Viva Survivors Select!

Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2025: Confidence

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For day three of my look back at 2025 I return to confidence. I really love exploring how to encourage confidence for the viva. Digging into this topic has had a huge impact on my life and I love sharing ideas with PhD candidates.

How confident are you feeling for your viva? What steps are you taking to help yourself?

One helpful step might be to take a look at The Confidence Issue, the seventh issue of curated help from my Viva Survivors Select series of zines!

Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2025: Short Posts

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For day two of my best posts of 2025 I wanted to share a selection of the shorter posts I’ve published in the last year. These cover a lot of different topics as I like to explore many aspects of the viva. Sometimes it feels just right to write a little!

There are lots more short posts in the archive – and twenty-five more curated posts in The Sparks Issue of Viva Survivors Select too!

Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2025: Viva Prep

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I’ve shared a lot of posts about viva prep in the last twelve months. Here are five of my favourites, dipping into several different tasks and approaches to getting ready for the viva:

There are many more posts about viva prep on Viva Survivors if you’re looking for ideas of what you can do to get ready for your viva. And you could also check out the third and fourth issues of Viva Survivors Select too if you’re looking for even more help from the archive!

Nathan

Almost

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It’s almost time for this blog to take a few days of rest. I’ll send a short seasonal greeting tomorrow but after that there will be no posts until Sunday 28th December, when I’ll start my annual tradition of several days of list posts sharing some of my best of picks for this year.

Expect the following:

  • Sunday 28th December 2025: I’ll share five of my favourite posts on viva prep from 2025.
  • Monday 29th December 2025: I’ll offer a selection of the best short thoughts from this year.
  • Tuesday 30th December 2025: I’ll turn to posts about confidence, one of my big topics!
  • Wednesday 31st December 2025: I’ll round out the year with a few reflections on what it means to survive the viva.

Normal service will more or less resume on Thursday 1st January 2026!

Until then if you’re looking for help then search for topics or use the tags that you’ll see on the main page and beneath posts. If you’re just looking for something to read then hit this link to get a random post of viva help.

 

And one more little thought: with Christmas, with your viva prep, with anything, when it’s almost time to stop or almost time to rest you still have the chance to do something positive to help yourself. So if you’re preparing to take a break from things please do yourself a favour for the future and write a sticky note saying what your first action is when you get back to work!

Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Surviving

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Well done! If you’re reading this you did it. You made it through another tough year. You survived 2022. Was it more challenging than previous years for you? How are you coping? And how ready are you for 2023?

2022 was the year I finally got COVID (thankfully not too serious and thankfully long recovered now). 2022 was the year I celebrated five years of publishing this blog. I shared another post marking how different life has become. And 2022 was another year where I continued to share thoughts on surviving on this blog, because I think it helps with the context of the viva and what someone has to do to succeed.

  • Verbs For The Viva – words matter, so it helps to keep the right ones in mind.
  • Not To Plan – an encouragement about what the last few years might mean…
  • Disrupted & Different – …and some more thoughts about preparing for a pandemic-influenced viva.
  • One More Time – that’s what the viva is, one more time after many times before.
  • Keep Going – two words that are worth exploring.

Another year. Again, well done.

Tomorrow we start a new one. You know what you need to do. You can decide how you will do it. Keep focussed on why you’re doing it and you’ll get there.

PS: the Viva Survivors blog celebrated five years of daily posts earlier this year! To mark the journey so far I wrote and published “Keep Going – A Viva Survivors Anthology” – a curated collection of the best of the first five years. If you’re looking for viva help then this blog is and always will be free – if you want to support the blog and get an awesome book as well, then take a look at the options at the link. Thanks!

Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Confidence

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Years of work, weeks of prep and then… How will you feel at your viva?

Feeling nervous isn’t wrong but it doesn’t feel right. It’s a recognition that something matters: your viva and the outcome matter a lot. What can you do to feel confident for your viva? That’s a big question that occupies a lot of my thinking for this blog and for the work I do in webinars. Here are some of my favourite thoughts on the topic for this year:

Confidence is a skill and a story, a journey and a target. It’s how you feel and how you act. There are lots of ways to frame it and lots of things you can do to grow it for yourself, particularly in advance of your viva.

Tomorrow we finish the review of the year with the topic of surviving.

PS: the Viva Survivors blog celebrated five years of daily posts earlier this year! To mark the journey so far I wrote and published “Keep Going – A Viva Survivors Anthology” – a curated collection of the best of the first five years. If you’re looking for viva help then this blog is and always will be free – if you want to support the blog and get an awesome book as well, then take a look at the options at the link. Thanks!

Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Short Posts

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I very rarely set out to write a long post. Viva Survivors posts tend to be around 200 words, but sometimes they can be a lot shorter, as with these six posts on a range of topics:

And how about one more? Making A Difference – something you must do over the course of your PhD!

There are two more days of my review of 2022. Tomorrow we explore confidence and the day after we finish the year by looking at the topic of surviving.

PS: the Viva Survivors blog celebrated five years of daily posts earlier this year! To mark the journey so far I wrote and published “Keep Going – A Viva Survivors Anthology” – a curated collection of the best of the first five years. If you’re looking for viva help then this blog is and always will be free – if you want to support the blog and get an awesome book as well, then take a look at the options at the link. Thanks!

Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Reflections

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We continue the review of the year today with some of my favourite reflections about the viva.

I like these sort of posts, though I don’t tend to write them every day. They often involve noticing something about the viva that is odd, or connecting something of the viva with something in the wider world. And sometimes, as with the first post on today’s list, they involve telling a story:

  • The Red Button – a little story with a big point.
  • Two Pictures – a post about communicating the picture of your research that you see, to someone who can’t see what you see.
  • Map, Compass, Landmarks – a little reflection on how we think about what to expect for the viva.
  • The Same, But Different – contrasting in-person and video vivas.
  • Worry – where do you give your focus when you worry? How does that help?
  • Fuses & Feelings – thinking about what trips us up and what we can do about it.

Stop. Breathe. Think. Reflect. What’s standing out about your year? What do you notice about your PhD journey? And what does that mean?

Tomorrow: some of the shortest thoughts I’ve shared this year!

PS: the Viva Survivors blog celebrated five years of daily posts earlier this year! To mark the journey so far I wrote and published “Keep Going – A Viva Survivors Anthology” – a curated collection of the best of the first five years. If you’re looking for viva help then this blog is and always will be free – if you want to support the blog and get an awesome book as well, then take a look at the options at the link. Thanks!

Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Viva Prep

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I finish every year of Viva Survivors with a look back at some of my favourite posts from the year. In the coming days I’ll share topics like surviving and confidence, as well as general reflections on the viva and some of my favourite short posts.

Today we start with viva prep as that feeds into lots of areas related to the viva. What can you do to get ready and how do you do it? Here are some ideas:

  • The Busy Factor – to begin with, advice on getting ready that helps if you’re busy – and helps if you’re not!
  • Find Five – prompts for starting viva prep.
  • Annotated For You – why and how to annotate your thesis, with examples of what you could do.
  • Summary Values – a short reflection on why writing summaries can help your viva prep and viva.
  • A Helpful Acronym – a long overdue return to writing about one of my favourite ideas for viva prep!

Viva prep is not a huge amount of work. A little thought in how you do it can make a big difference in terms of how you feel. Tomorrow: some of my favourite reflections from Viva Survivors 2022!

PS: the Viva Survivors blog celebrated five years of daily posts earlier this year! To mark the journey so far I wrote and published “Keep Going – A Viva Survivors Anthology” – a curated collection of the best of the first five years. If you’re looking for viva help then this blog is and always will be free – if you want to support the blog and get an awesome book as well, then take a look at the options at the link. Thanks!

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