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Tag: getting ready

Nathan

Where Is Your Focus?

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Where are you giving your attention when you plan your viva prep?

You don’t have to do everything all at once. You don’t have to do what everyone else does.

It might be a good idea to summarise the content of each chapter in your thesis – but equally you could focus on the contribution of your thesis as a whole. Either way could work well to get you reviewing and reflecting.

Having a mock viva is a good general preparation idea – but it might be even more helpful for you to explore different ways of explaining key parts of your research to friends or in a presentation.

Be mindful of your focus as you get ready. Are you doing what you need to do to get ready?

Nathan

Assumptions

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Whatever you assume about your viva will have an impact on how you prepare for it, how you feel as you get ready and what you do as you start talking to your examiners.

Before you get to that point it makes sense to check regulations, viva stories and general expectations: do your assumptions line up with what the rules and other people say about the viva?

 

If you assume that your viva is going to be hard questions and unfair criticism then you’re going to make a tough time for yourself.

If you assume that your examiners are there to talk and listen and prompt a discussion then you might still be nervous but you’ll be able to prepare yourself.

And if, after all the work you’ve invested, you assume that you’re ready then you will approach the viva with a more positive outlook than if you assume you are somehow lucky or just getting by.

 

PS:  very quick announcement that The Survival Issue of Viva Survivors Select is out tomorrow! This is the final issue of this volume and joins seven other collections I’ve curated and released over the last seven months or so. Do look out for an announcement email tomorrow 🙂

Nathan

List Ten Problems

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Here’s a little viva prep exercise to unpack problems you faced on your PhD journey.

Start by listing up to ten problems that you faced. These could be access to literature or resources, time challenges, supervisory issues, personal circumstances, a particularly difficult research issue or something else.

Once you have up to ten on your list take a minute or two to rank them according to severity, starting with the one which had least impact and then working your way to the most severe.

For each one write a few notes to respond to the following questions:

  • Why was it a problem?
  • How did you overcome it?
  • What was the specific impact on your PhD?

Reflecting and writing you will build up ideas for how you could talk about this with your examiners if the topic comes up at your viva. You might make connections between problems and see there was a deeper issue you addressed.

However big the problems were you will also see that you were able to rise to meet them: you overcame a lot to get this far and that means something, both for your research and for you.

Nathan

Change For Your Prep

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There might be a certain logic to do some of your viva prep in a different space to where you would typically work.

A different space allows you to think away from your typical environment. Maybe working at a different time could give you a new insight into how you work or what you’ve done well. Working in a different way (writing longhand rather than typing) might change the pace of your observations or the way you think about things.

Viva prep could be a really good time for changing things up as you get ready for your viva.

Nathan

Two Step Viva Prep

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Step One: Make lists.

Step Two: Do the work.

Viva prep involves a fair amount of work, reflection, planning and time – but you don’t need to make it complicated.

 

PS: one more helpful viva prep step would be to subscribe to the Viva Survivors blog and get a new helpful post emailed to you every day!

Nathan

Two Months Left

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Use the next two months as an opportunity to finish the year in a good place for your viva.

Every day for the rest of the year take two minutes to do one of the following:

  • Write down a work-related achievement from that day;
  • Write down one thing in your thesis you are proud of;
  • Write down one thing from your research that didn’t exist before your PhD;
  • Write down one thing that moves you closer to being ready for your viva.

If you do this for the next sixty days – let’s say you take Christmas Day off! – then you’ll have sixty small pieces of confidence for your viva. Sixty small thoughts that will help you start 2026 in a good place for whatever challenges await you.

Two minutes per day, one thought written down per day. What will you do?

Nathan

Making Sense Of Expectations

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Viva expectations are the patterns and trends that we find in university regulations, personal experiences and departmental practices. Viva expectations are estimates and ideas of what someone could reasonably experience for themselves.

  • What are they? You can find out. Check regulations and ask others about what it was like for them.
  • How do they apply? Broadly. It’s reasonable to assume if most people get minor corrections you probably will too. If vivas tend to being more than ninety minutes yours is unlikely to be less than an hour.
  • What do expectations mean for you? They mean you have something to prepare for. They mean that vivas aren’t random. They’re unique but not chaotic.
  • What might not apply? You’ll have to explore that for yourself. Your research or needs might lead to a viva that is different from a typical experience. If that’s the case though, it won’t be a surprise and there will be time and support to help you understand.

There’s a wide web of information that underpins vivas. It’s not hard to make sense of it though, either in generally or for a particular situation. Take a little time to ask some questions and make sense of it all for yourself.

 

PS: if you want to explore viva expectations more you could check out September’s edition of Viva Survivors Select. The Expectations Issue is a curated collection from the Viva Survivors archive with twenty helpful posts all about viva expectations plus some original writing to help you get ready.

Nathan

Building A Bridge

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Public domain image of a small wooden bridge that crosses a stream between two close banks.

Viva prep is like building a bridge between where you are when you submit your thesis and where you need to be for your viva.

But the gap is not that wide. The bridge does not have to be that complicated.

Why take the chance that you might stumble when preparation is not much work compared to all the work you’ve done before?

 

PS: Viva prep is one of the big topics of my Viva Survivor webinar which is running on Wednesday 3rd December 2025. I’ve shared this session more than 400 times and it is my comprehensive live session on getting ready for the viva. Check the link for full details of what to expect from the webinar!

Nathan

Viva Prep Recipes

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I do a lot of the cooking in our house. Most of what I make regularly is the result of recipes I carry in my head but I sometimes look in cookbooks to check my instincts around cooking times, temperatures and good ingredient pairings.

It also helps me to figure out alternatives too. Will this dish still work if I change the seasoning? Probably. Can I swap tomatoes for carrots? Maybe not. And what do I do if I need to make a big change from the process described?

 

Viva prep feels a lot like this too. There are a lot of good ideas for how to get ready but you have to find something that feels right for you and tweak it from there.

A mock viva is often held around two weeks before the viva date but a week before your viva or a month before could work too with a few adjustments.

It’s common to start viva prep by reading your thesis but journalling or making other notes is equally helpful and valid.

Ask around to find out what others did. Read blog posts for good ideas. Then assemble your own recipe for viva prep success.

 

PS: I released the latest edition of Viva Survivors Select this week. As with today’s post The Confidence Issue has lots of practical ideas from the Viva Survivors archive for building confidence for the viva!

Nathan

Unusual Expectations

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Some PhD candidates have unusual expectations for their vivas.

I’m not a mind-reader, but I know this must be true because of the questions that some candidates ask. I have met candidates who have expected the following:

  • Every question will be hard and every comment will be critical;
  • The external will ask most of the questions and the internal won’t care;
  • Success at the viva is 50/50, a coin toss between passing and failing;
  • The examiners will play good cop/bad cop!
  • The viva is just random so there’s no way to prepare.

These are all quite extreme! More benign and unusual expectations include candidates believing that they can’t take a break or that they can’t consult their thesis.

 

It’s not just that these expectations are wrong and don’t match reality: they are really negative. To hold them can only harm someone’s confidence as they get ready.

It’s not wrong to feel nervous ahead of your viva, but if you find yourself worried by an expectation or belief about the viva then find a way to check if your expectation is reasonable. If it’s unusual then you can maybe stop worrying.

And if you find that it isn’t unusual then there will still be something you can do towards feeling more prepared and more ready.

 

PS: I released the latest edition of Viva Survivors Select yesterday! The Confidence Issue contains twenty posts from the Viva Survivors archive exploring confidence for the viva including how to respond well to questions in the viva – something which definitely helps with having good expectations.

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