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Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2025: Surviving

Daily Post

It’s the last day of 2025 and my last day to share some of my favourite posts of 2025.

The blog is called Viva Survivors, so we have to have posts about surviving!

I also have to shout out These Interesting Times, a post from March that looked back at the last five years. How have you made it this far? What helped you manage to keep going in difficult circumstances throughout your PhD journey and particularly over the last five years?

 

Finally for 2025, if you’re looking for some more thoughts on surviving then take a look at The Survival Issue, the most recent curated collection of Viva Survivors Select!

Nathan

In Case Of Emergency

Daily Post

There’s a relatively small chance that a question at the viva could make you feel like you’re in an emergency.

  • A stressful question.
  • A complicated question.
  • An unclear question.
  • A never-before-considered question.

If your first thought is “I don’t know” or “Aaaaaargh!” it can be hard to figure out how to respond.

Here’s the best advice I can give for those moments: do exactly what you’ve been doing for the non-emergency and non-stressful questions.

 

Whatever the question or comment from your examiners: pause, think it through and then respond. Your response could be an answer, an opinion, sharing an idea or asking a question.

If the question is really simple: pause, think and respond.

If the question is complex: pause, think and respond.

If the question makes you think “Aaaargh!”: pause, think and respond.

 

You don’t need an answer for everything. You do need to engage with every question.

Having one process that you can follow for simple questions and stressful questions makes it easier for you to follow and engage with the discussion in the viva.

Questions can be complicated. Your process for responding to them doesn’t need to be.

Nathan

In Case Of Emergency

Daily Post

What if your external examiner cancels with a week to go?

What do you do if you get an email asking you for submission fees, and you’re sure that doesn’t apply to you?

What would you do if you broke your leg or just got sick a few days before your viva?

What do you do? Who do you call?

You can’t plan what you would do for every unexpected event – they’re unexpected, of course! But you can be a little prepared all the same. Spend two minutes as soon as possible, months before your viva if that’s where you are now: get a name, email address and phone number for someone at your university who could help in case anything unexpected, a real emergency, happens in the lead up to your viva.

Your supervisor might be the person to call, but equally it could be a member of staff in your Graduate School or Doctoral College. Figure out who the most likely person is, get their contact details written on a Post-it Note and put that away just in case.

You’ll never know when an emergency will strike, you can’t always know how it might be solved. But you can know who to contact first to help you.