Daily viva help for PhDs
Not just the 1st of January. Not the 2nd, once you finish celebrating New Year’s Day!
Every day is a chance to look at what you do, how you do it, why you do it and think, “What else…?”
What else can you do to help build your talent?
What else can you do to steer your confidence?
What else will you need to be ready for your viva?
What else can you achieve in this new year?
Deep breath.
Get ready.
However much of your PhD is left, whatever 2020 did to you, take what you’ve got – of your research, your thesis and yourself – and build on it.
Find what’s good and do more good.
Find what’s hindering you and steer away from it.
Find what you need to help you get to submission, to the viva and beyond.
If your viva is this year, even if it’s months and months away, just reflect, “What could I do to help myself be ready?” Tuck those thoughts away, and come back to them when it’s time to prepare.
One more time, survive means “manage to keep going in difficult circumstances“.
My wish for you for 2021: Keep Going.
Every year on the blog I finish by sharing a few days of my favourite posts from the year. We start 2020’s round-up with the important topic of viva preparation, and posts that cover many different aspects of getting ready for the viva.
What will you be doing to get ready for your viva? And have you read any other helpful posts on the topic on Viva Survivors, or elsewhere, that you could share with someone who needed help?
Tomorrow: the best of my long posts from this year!
That one question you know you’ll struggle with.
It might be a rational concern or an irrational worry, but either way, you can do something about it. Whatever the question is about, if you know it troubles you before the viva then you can do something to prepare for it.
If there’s a question that bothers you before the viva, then you can do something just in case it comes up.
This whole year has felt outside of my control. I imagine, at least at times, that you’ve felt similar.
Still, I could choose how I would act. I could choose how I would approach things. The outcome of a situation might not have been within my power to control, and in some cases I’ve only had a few options to choose from – but I could still choose.
All through your PhD, you’ve made choices. Decisions about methods, choices about projects to follow (or not); you choose which literature to read and follow, and which you will leave out of your bibliography.
During your prep you can choose what actions you take. What steps you will follow to get ready. When you take them and how you do them is up to you.
And in the viva you can choose how you will approach the discussion. How will you listen? How will you respond?
The more actions you take, and the more you act to follow your intentions, the more likely you are to find the successful outcome you’re looking for.
That’s what the viva is all about. How good is your research? How well did you do it? How well do you know it and your field? And just how good are you?
It’s a test that doesn’t require perfection to pass. Preparation will help you get ready, but remember: you can’t have got to submission by being merely lucky, and you can’t have done the work unless you were good.
The viva might test you, but your talent will help you succeed.
It won’t make you perfect.
It won’t mean you’ll get no corrections.
It won’t mean you’ll be blank-free in the viva, or that it’s impossible you’ll be stumped.
It doesn’t come with anything like a guarantee.
But it means that, for a small investment of time, you are as ready as you can possibly be to meet your examiners and talk about your work with them. You’ve taken the time to boost yourself, not better yourself. You already know everything you need to know, you can already do everything you need to do.
This is the stretch before the race, or checking your lines just before you walk on stage.
The little extra that helps you get the viva done.
Not just prepared for your viva.
Not just OK.
And not “not too nervous…”
Ready!
How would that really feel? What would you have done to be ready, do you think? How long would it take? When would you start before your viva?
What do you need to do to get ready?
If I’m ever asked to give general advice for PhD candidates I suggest that they find some way to scratch their itch:
Find a nice little side project to your main research, something that might use your skills, talents or knowledge in a slightly different way. Find something that makes you smile to work on it. Find something perhaps even unconnected to your research but which helps you to make something or do something that helps others. If all it does is help you balance out your normal work time, then it’s time well spent.
There’s a place for itch-scratching in viva prep too. Make notes on the favourite parts of your thesis. Find interesting papers to read and challenge yourself with. Have coffee with friends to talk about the last few years or perhaps have a mini-viva. Even incentivise your prep with some kind of fun reward.
All of these sorts of things have a place in helping you get ready.
What could you do? What have you been putting off? What could you use to both scratch an itch – A new project? Answering a question to keep you thinking? Presenting your work? – and help you get ready?
Viva prep is less.
Less reading than when you were researching.
Less writing than when you were writing up.
Less thinking than when you were figuring things out.
The viva is a fraction of the time you’ll spend on getting ready, and viva prep is a vanishingly small period compared to the months you’ll put into your PhD. Perspective matters. You need to get ready for the viva, but the real work that helps you pass has already been done.