Daily viva help for PhDs
When you know who your examiners will be, start your preparations for meeting them by reflecting on three questions:
Reflect and make notes on who your examiners are and what they do, then think about what you need to do to get ready for them.
It’s good to know about what your examiners do but you don’t have to know all about them to be prepared.
At a minimum, if you don’t know much about them you can read a few of their recent papers in the weeks leading up to the viva. Then you can get a sense of who they are, what they do and what they spend their research time on.
It could be you already know this before you submit your thesis. If their work has been part of the background for your research then you might be more familiar than I’ve outlined above – and of course that’s fine too!
And similarly, it’s enough for them to be familiar with your area of research if it doesn’t correspond to everything they know and do – your examiners don’t need to be experts in your thesis focus in order to be good examiners for you.
There are three things your examiners have to do in your viva:
They have to do this. There’s a lot to talk about and a lot that could be brought up through the discussion, but as a starting point, consider how you would respond to these three questions:
Each question corresponds to a point from above; there’s more to ask, more to say and these are just starting points. But what would you say?
What are the best parts of your work?
What are you most proud of?
What was a challenge that you overcame?
And what do you like to share with others about your research?
The viva is not a platform for you to simply proclaim the greatness of your research and writing, but it helps to go there with ideas of what really matters. Reflecting on your research before the viva helps to boost your confidence for talking about it with your examiners.
Your examiners don’t expect you to have all the answers. They don’t want you to read from a script or parrot sentences you’ve learned. They want to hear your most considered thoughts.
Take a little time in your viva preparations to consider what your work means and what you can share about it. What do you want to emphasise to your examiners? What matters?
A small part of viva prep is to make sure you have a little familiarity with your examiners’ work.
You might read that and think, “Of course I know about my examiners! I cited them ten times!” That’s not always the case. It may be that your examiners have been chosen for other reasons. Perhaps they are in the same field but you didn’t need to know about their work to do your research.
As you prepare, make sure you know about their work. Just a little. Look at their last two or three papers. Get a sense of what they do, what they know and what they have focused on recently as researchers.
In particular, look for connections between their work and yours. What are the common methods? What are the common themes or interests? When you reflect more on this, what is it likely that they would be familiar with as they come to read your thesis? Is there anything you need to know more about them and their work to feel ready for your viva?
You don’t need to be an expert in your examiners and their research. A little work to explore the connections between you and them will be enough to help you be ready for your viva.
Before your viva, reflect on the best of your work, your results and your thesis.
How can you communicate the value of what you’ve done?
What are the words that will share how good your thesis is?
Write summaries, capture keywords and rehearse talking about your work. Don’t leave it to the viva and don’t be too humble.Don’t bluster or over-exaggerate the outcomes of your work, but also don’t focus on the might-have-beens and if-onlys of the pandemic.
If you need to talk about the impact of problems and obstacles then do so, but leave no room for doubt that your work is valuable and that you are capable.
Your thesis isn’t perfect. It’s almost certain you have typos or passages to correct. There are likely other approaches you could take in your methods. Your recollection or knowledge might have gaps. And you can’t have done every possible thing even with years to complete your PhD.
So should you apologise to your examiners?
Or simply acknowledge?
I don’t know if there are no circumstances where it might be good to apologise to your examiners, but I think for the most part acknowledging and discussing the point is a better course of action.
You’re in a bubble.
How could you not be? You’ve read lots of papers and done lots of relevant work and now you’ve written a book! You’re in a bubble, thinking what you think and knowing what you know and life is fine.
Now here come your examiners. They want to talk to you. They need to talk to you. They’ve been reading what you wrote and they have questions. They have comments. They have opinions and until you speak to them you won’t know what they want to discuss.
You can make some educated guesses, but those will be from inside your bubble. They’ll be based on what you did, what you know and what you wrote. Good guesses, but limited.
Unless…
Unless you burst your bubble by reading your examiners’ recent publications. You can take a little time before your viva to get a sense of who they are, what they do and what they think. You can find out a little more information, become more well-informed and see if there’s anything else you need to know to be prepared for your viva.
Being in your bubble has served you well, but you need more to be ready for your examiners.
You can’t know what your examiners will ask you at your viva.
You can have a good idea of what topics they will be interested in. You can make reasonable guesses. You can expect certain lines of questioning. You can look at past patterns, vague or clear, from what others tell you about their experiences.
And while all that is useful it is still very different from knowing what questions you are going to be asked.
It’s important to prepare for the viva – and necessary your focus doesn’t skew towards pre-empting particular questions. Don’t prepare only for questions you want, questions you expect or questions that you simply have a hunch about.
Prepare for the discussion by engaging in discussion. A mock viva could help set the tone and help you to find the balance between expecting topics and being prepared for questions that arise from what you’ve done.
After submission it’s likely that your thesis will have flaws. It’s possible that your thesis may have problems too. Both of these have the potential to be talked about in the viva and have consequences for corrections afterwards.
Flaws are simple. A flaw is relatively simple to spot through careful reading and obvious with hindsight. It’s the spelling mistake that gets overlooked and corrected, or an alteration to a diagram or table that provides clarity. You might find it or your examiners might; a flaw could be frustrating but it’s not a challenge to fix.
Problems are complicated. A problem might not be obvious at first glance. A problem could need exploring or explaining; it could have a simple solution after conversation removes confusion. The biggest contrast with a flaw is that a flaw is definite: something needs to be changed. That might not be the case with a problem. A problem could exist in the mind of a candidate or examiner – something has been read and interpreted one way when the truth is something different.
Flaws are found and fixed simply. Problems are perceived and pondered on carefully.
Neither flaws nor problems should get in the way of success at the viva. Read your thesis carefully in preparation, make notes if you need to, then be ready to talk in your viva about the amazing work you’ve done, as well as the flaws and problems that need addressing in some way.