Daily viva help for PhDs
You can’t be ready for your viva until you’ve at least submitted your thesis.
You need to have spent some time doing various viva prep tasks.
To be ready you have to feel some amount of confidence for the viva.
To be ready you have to have some idea of what to expect.
Ready isn’t an irreversible state: you have to maintain it.
Once you do feel ready, consider: what could you do to hold that feeling? What can you do to keep feeling confident?
A key step of viva preparation is investing a little time to practise. A mock viva could be a great rehearsal for the real thing, but it’s not the only option.
There are reasons why mock vivas are generally valued as a part of viva prep. They’re supposed to help you explore what it would be like to be in the viva. More fundamentally though, you need practise at responding to questions; taking the time to think and feeling comfortable doing so.
So what opportunities will you make for yourself?
Find out when and how you’ll have your viva. Check the regulations. Google your examiners and bookmark their staff pages. Note down key expectations your supervisors share. Be sure of the viva process at your institution.
The formalities matter. They’re also a really small part of the viva and of getting ready for it. Sort them out as soon as possible so you can focus on preparing yourself, your thesis and your confidence for the viva.
In the end, getting ready for the viva comes down to you figuring out your way to make it work.
There’s a lot of viva advice, both general and practical. This site alone contains over 24 hours of podcast interviews and 1500+ blog posts. You can’t do it all. As helpful as I like to be you can’t apply it all to your situation.
You have to do it your way.
Your friends, colleagues and supervisors will be able to help. They’ll have their experience. They might have key information which could help you get ready. But they’re not you: your life, your research and your situation might be so different that to do what they advise might be stressful or even impossible.
You have to do it your way.
So listen. Find sources that you can trust. Ask questions, then check the answers against your situation. Find a way to make it work for you. There’s lots of good advice out there. There are lots of things that will help you be ready and feel ready. But there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to viva prep.
You have to do it your way.
I’ve been playing the video game Hades every day for about a month and I don’t see myself stopping any time soon.
The son of the Greek god Hades fights to escape the Underworld. It’s fantastic, stylish, polished and deep. It is an absolute delight to play and experience – even though there’s a steep learning curve, lots of challenges and skillsets to juggle and bring together. Again and again you die and return to the start…
…and in a weird way it makes me think of my PhD journey!
Again and again I had to rise to the challenge. Sometimes I knew what I had to do. Sometimes I found what I was looking for. Sometimes I could just do what I needed to.
But again and again I faced setbacks. Things didn’t work. References couldn’t be found. Answers were not forthcoming.
Again and again I started again. I would have to go back to the beginning of a problem and try to look at it from a new perspective. I would need to find a new way forward.
Again and again I grew. I became more skilled, more knowledgeable, more sure that I could take on new challenges.
And again and again I was surprised, delighted and frustrated as I continued on my journey.
All of your agains – the repeated steps, the start-overs, the learning, the experience, the knowledge-building – all of the frustration and growth and joy – all of this is what you take with you to the viva.
No more agains. The final step, more or less, and the talent, work and time you’ve invested helps you through.
Done, finally… Until you take on your next challenge.
Annotation can help make your thesis more useful for the viva – and there’s a lot of empty space in the borders of your thesis pages.
The top and bottom of a page could be helpful to highlight key points, to summarise the content or even to offer a word of encouragement. If something is great, use the header to make it stand out. If there’s something tricky consider using the space at the bottom to leave a helpful note or two.
Headers and footers don’t need to be filled but they’re a great opportunity for you to prepare and to help in the viva. How will you use yours?
I imagine that if Aesop wrote a new fable about a Tortoise and a Hare getting ready for their vivas there would be some interesting updates…
The Hare would rush their prep. They’d get it done but only by working furiously. And they might burnout or feel overwhelmed as they got closer to their viva.
Unlike the original fable they would still “win” – as they’re not in competition with the Tortoise – but it might not be an easy race for them to get ready.
The Tortoise would go slow. The Tortoise would start early. They would go step-by-step, day-by-day. No hurry, no pause. No need for rush. No need for stress.
The Tortoise is just as ready for their viva as the Hare, but their journey is much better for them, their confidence and their viva.
In your viva prep: be more Tortoise.
In the days leading up to the viva your big picture checklist might look a little like this:
Your confidence might be the last thing you have to check off. It’s hard to mark as “done” with a simple tick. Unlike the previous items you can’t simply see confidence.
Confidence can be found by reflecting on all of your experiences of research. It can be seen in the progress you’ve made. Confidence is nestled amongst all of your writing and your finished thesis – proof that you’ve grown in ability. Confidence is built up through preparation for the viva and realising that you’re ready.
It isn’t always simple to check confidence off your list, but you can do it.
Underlining can make your thesis better for the viva.
Annotating your thesis during viva prep adds value to what’s on the page, making it more useful for the viva. Reflect on how underlining could help you and your thesis.
There’s no best, one-size-fits-all plan for viva prep. You have to explore what works for you, and if you’re busy that could feel quite stressful.
This blog contains lots of ideas for what might help someone get ready. How do you plan all that out? You explore by applying constraints to see what could work.
Exploring just a few constraints can help you arrive at sensible options for getting the work done.
Stop stressing about how it will all get done. Start exploring with useful constraints that will help you be finished.