You Are Here

Tag: getting ready

Nathan

6 Ways To Read Your Thesis

Daily Post

An incomplete list of ways to read your thesis in preparation for your viva.

  1. At the last minute: waiting until the day before to cram it into your brain!
  2. Casually and without care: just reading whenever and wherever with no agenda.
  3. Late in the day: after all of the other work for the day is done and you’re tired.
  4. At a glance: just skimmed because you wrote it!
  5. Obsessively: read and re-read and re-read again to make it stick.
  6. Planned and with purpose: read carefully to help your thinking.

To avoid any doubts, I’m clearly signposting the last option!

Sketch out a plan around submission time for how you will read your thesis. Don’t leave it until the day before your viva. Take time to read your thesis in a way that suits you and your other responsibilities. Consider the best time to get the work done. Read your thesis carefully at least once. You don’t have to re-read your work: you just need to feel confident that you know what you’ve presented in your thesis.

Sketch a plan. Read your thesis well. Be prepared.

Nathan

Capturing Thoughts

Daily Post

There are lots of posts on this site that encourage creating summaries or making lists. This isn’t because your examiners need to see them or expect you to quote from them in the viva.

Creating a summary is an opportunity to capture your thoughts on a topic, whether that’s the broad details of a research method or the key points of your examiners’ recent papers.

A summary or a list helps put your thoughts into words. If you have any topics, ideas, results or research that you need to make clearer as you prepare then take an hour to write a summary. You’re not crafting perfect paragraphs to quote: you’re finding words to help you think clearly.

Take a little time during your viva prep to make notes, write summaries and break down key information.

Nathan

Before You Prepare

Daily Post

Viva prep is a set of tasks and activities you complete between submission and the viva which help you to feel ready for the viva. Before submission, to create a good space for your prep, do the following:

  • Read the viva regulations for your university.
  • Gather some nice stationery to help with note-making.
  • Sketch out a rough plan for how you will do your prep.
  • Ask your supervisor about their availability.
  • Ask friends and family to support your prep time.
  • Finish your research and your thesis.

Of course, the last one is pretty important!

The other points are also importatant but they’ll take up far less time to help you make a good space for getting ready for your viva.

Nathan

Umbrellas

Daily Post

Viva prep is a bit like carrying an umbrella on an uncertain day.

You look out the window. There are clouds. They’re grey but not dark grey. It might rain but it might not. You could leave the umbrella and take a chance or pick it up, carry it with you, make the effort and be sure that you’re covered.

After years of work, learning, results, development and growth, it’s reasonable to assume that a PhD candidate is good. Viva prep then helps ensure that a candidate is good for the particular challenge they’ll find at the viva. They might be fine, but prep will make sure that they are.

Carrying an umbrella is not a great effort to be sure of keeping dry. Neither is viva prep so great an undertaking to be sure of doing well.

You might be fine without it, but why take the risk?

Nathan

Questions By Moonlight

Daily Post

How about a little music to prepare by?

Whenever I need a quick thinking break or need to gather my ideas I listen to Clair de lune by Debussy. I think it’s my favourite piece of music. Listening to it never fails to give me five minutes of happy thought-arranging.

Get a piece of paper and a pen, pick a question from below and press play to have five minutes of reflective viva prep.

  • What are you most proud of in your PhD journey?
  • Which chapter was the most rewarding to write?
  • What are you looking forward to talking about in the viva?
  • What steps can you take to build your confidence now?
  • What do you hope you’ll be asked in your viva?

Small pieces of prep help. Little reflections help to build up the picture of how you think and feel about your thesis. And a little music can’t hurt either.

Nathan

In The Distance

Daily Post

If you’re reading this and you’re in your first or second year of your PhD, you don’t have to worry about your viva! You don’t have to give it any great thought: for now, keep on with the main work of your research and your own development. You don’t need to be focussing on your viva.

And with that said, if you want to help yourself now and when you get to the viva, consider doing some of the following:

  • Regularly reflect on how you’re doing. Highlight your successes. See how your confidence changes.
  • Find opportunities to talk about your work. This will help you figure out how to explain what you do and what it means. This is helpful for your PhD, your thesis and your viva.
  • Pay attention when your friends and colleagues have vivas. What do they do to get ready? How do they seem before and after?

Little things you do over a long period of time will help you both on the journey and at your destination. Your viva is a way off in the distance. Don’t worry about it, but help yourself as you make your way there.

 

And of course, if you’re in your third year or fast-approaching your viva, you can follow the ideas above, they’ll still help!

Nathan

Again, For The Final Time

Daily Post

That’s the viva. You’re doing something you have done many, many times throughout the last few years – thinking about and talking about your research and your ability as a researcher – and this is the last time you’ll need to do that.

(you might want to do it again, you might want to be a researcher or have a career that involves this – but you won’t need to do it after your viva)

At your viva you need to discuss your research contribution, your PhD journey and what you can do as a researcher. These are all things you must necessarily have done a lot during your PhD. The viva is a particular challenge which requires particular prep, but it’s not so different from the rest of your PhD experience.

The viva means doing it one more time. Maybe the last time.

Nathan

Build Your Habits

Daily Post

Viva prep is work: a series of actions that steer you towards being ready for your examiners.

You can approach it as a finite project, setting out tasks and activities to a plan for yourself, but it might also help to think of it as a cluster of habits – regular tasks or processes to help you prepare.

  • You could, for example, get in to the habit of writing down questions about your research whenever they occur to you.
  • You could find a convenient ten minutes every day to write about your thesis contribution.
  • You could start a practice of looking at difficult parts of your thesis with an open mind, “What can I learn from this?”

We are the sum of our habits. The things we do often, good and bad, give us a foundation for how we approach whatever situations we find ourselves in.

What habits could you choose for viva prep? How can you steer yourself in a good way for your viva?

Nathan

A Few More Words

Daily Post

Annotation helps you to prepare in two ways.

First, you have to think carefully about your thesis while you add the notes or emphasis you need.

Second, you have a more helpful resource for your viva.

 

Annotation is effective when you do it in two stages.

First, think carefully about what you really need or want your thesis to have. What do you want to see or find more easily? Make a list.

Second, consider how you will do each of the items on the list in a clear and consistent way. How can you make your annotations simple so they don’t confuse you?

 

In the big picture view of viva prep, annotation is a few more words to add to your thesis to help you get ready. With a little thought it can be a relatively simple exercise to make your thesis better.

What do you need? How will you do it?

Nathan

Preparing For The Unknown

Daily Post

Your examiners will have a plan for what they want to talk about at your viva.

This isn’t a script. They’re not asking a set list of questions like a questionnaire. They’re using pre-prepared questions and points to prompt the discussion.

You might have some expectations. Based on past experiences of talking about your work or because of your research you might think, “I’ll probably be asked about…” or “I’ll bet they want to talk about…”

It’s reasonable to have hopes or expectations, but you still won’t know until you get to your viva and it’s happening. There’s lots you can do to be prepared for the unknown though:

  • Talk to friends about their experiences.
  • Talk to your supervisors about viva expectations.
  • Reflect on your contribution to think about what examiners might want to talk about.
  • Read your thesis to remind yourself of what you’ve done.
  • Practise for the viva by talking about your work or having a mock viva.

You won’t know what questions will be asked until you get to your viva, but doing any of the above will help you feel a little more ready for whatever questions your examiners do ask.

1 … 21 22 23 24 25 … 70