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Tag: mock viva

Nathan

Rehearsal, Not Run-through

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A mock viva is rehearsal for the viva but not a run-through. It’s important to grasp this. There are no scripts to learn but there’s a mood to appreciate. You can’t know the right words in advance but you can get a sense of the tone and the process.

Your supervisor and anyone else involved will try to give you an experience that feels like a viva. They’ll ask relevant questions and make comments to simulate a typical viva but ultimately it won’t match the real one that you’ll eventually have.

It’s a rehearsal, not a run-through. If you understand and accept the purpose then a mock viva is probably one of the most valuable activities you can engage with to help your viva preparation.

Nathan

Why You Rehearse

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An incomplete list of reasons why a PhD candidate would benefit from rehearsal before the viva.

To know how it might feel to be in the viva, minute to minute.

To get a sense of what you might do when you’re asked a question.

To get a sense of how you might feel and what you might do when you’re asked an unexpected question.

To practise what you might do when asked a question.

To practise talking about your work with a good audience.

To review how you did afterwards.

To explore your work.

To explore how you describe your work.

To ask questions about your work and how others see it.

To revise your plans for your viva prep.

To build your confidence for the viva.

To hopefully feel better about your viva.

To experience what it feels like to say “I don’t know.”

To demonstrate to yourself that you can do it.

 

Rehearsal isn’t limited to a mock viva. There are many other opportunities like having a chat, coffee with friends, giving a seminar or having a mini-viva.

And the list of reasons above is incomplete. Why else might you rehearse for your viva?

Nathan

Manageable Tasks

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Viva prep is manageable. Compared to the massive scale of a PhD it’s a speck of effort.

A candidate might take weeks to get ready, but only in bits and pieces of time.

Half an hour of reading. Ten minutes of looking something up. An hour to bring some notes together.

You can run these sorts of tasks together into longer prep sessions but that’s not an essential part of the process.

Even a mock viva, if you have one, is manageable.

Viva prep is a series of manageable tasks that make the viva itself manageable.

Nathan

Mocks Aren’t Magic

Daily Post, Sabbatical

A mock viva is not a silver bullet that will solve all of your nervous feelings about the viva.

What are you looking for from your viva preparations?

  • Confidence?
  • A better picture of how you see your work?
  • A clearer understanding of what the viva is like?
  • Opportunities to practise?
  • Opportunities to think and get your head straight?
  • A chance to check your own talents?

If you know what you’re looking for, you can think about how you might find it. And while it’s not a magic solution that solves everything, when you think about what it can do, a mock viva could help with all of the above.

A mock viva is not a silver bullet, but maybe it’s good enough that we can think of it as a bronze arrow?

 

Viva Survivors Summer Sabbatical: I’m taking July, August and September off from new writing to concentrate on other creative projects, so will be sharing a post from the archives every day throughout those months. Today’s post was originally published on April 2nd 2019.

Nathan

Set Prep Goals

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It’s not enough to plan your viva prep and write read my thesis: you have to spell out what you’re trying to achieve by doing that.

Don’t just pencil in a date for your mock viva: what do you want from that experience?

And you can’t simply allocate time for checking a few papers written by your external: what do you want to know from reading them?

Plan your prep so you have an idea of how and when you’ll do the work.

Set prep goals so you have a good sense of what you’re achieving and how it will help you.

Nathan

Another Way

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If you can’t have a mock viva or don’t want one, there will be another way for you to rehearse talking about your research. Give a seminar, go for coffee with a friend or just chat with people about what you’ve done. These actions are not the same as a mock, but they help in the way that a mock does.

If you don’t want to read your thesis in preparation for your viva in the way that your colleague did, then think about how you could do it. They did a chapter a day? Maybe break it down into sections instead. Or maybe take an afternoon off to read it all. There will be a way for you to do the work.

A lot of really helpful viva prep advice gets swallowed in the specifics of how someone else did it. Find your way to do things like read your thesis, make notes and summaries, rehearse and so on. If your friend’s way won’t work or you can’t follow the advice of the person on the internet then find another way to do it that will work for you.

Nathan

Going Back

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What would you change about your viva prep if you could go back and do it over?

I was asked this at a recent webinar. I knew immediately what I would change: I would have a mock viva. I definitely spent way more time on getting ready for my viva than any typical postgraduate researcher would need, but the one thing I didn’t do was rehearse.

For five or six weeks I read my thesis, made notes on pages and read my examiners’ work. I checked several papers I’d forgotten and had a weekly meeting with my supervisor where we talked about a thesis chapter. My examiners asked me to prepare slides to give a presentation for the start of my viva.

And while all of this helped, none of it prepared me directly for the simple thing I would spend my time doing in the viva: responding to questions and being part of a discussion.

So what would I do differently? Rehearse. I recommend every candidate do this too!

Nathan

The Prototype Viva

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A mock viva or mini-viva is like a prototype for the real thing you’ll experience.

  • Does it have all of the questions you’ll be asked at your viva? No, but it has enough to get a sense of what to expect.
  • Will you have all of the familiarity or preparation you need to engage on the day? No, but you can figure out what else you need to do for that day.
  • Does it mostly work in the way you’d expect of the real viva? Yes, it’s still trying to explore and discuss all of the things you’ve done and can do.

A prototype never has all of the features of the final product, but it helps one to get a feeling for what it will be like. Whether you rehearse with your supervisor or with friends, make some time to engage with viva-like practice before your viva.

Nathan

The Good Kind Of Feedback

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Certain kinds of feedback can be useful as you prepare for your viva. By that stage you can’t make any changes to your thesis. Feedback has to be carefully targeted to things you can change.

If you have a mock viva it will help to get feedback afterwards. Focus on the good stuff. Ask questions that you want thoughts on, rather than simply see what your supervisor says.

If you rehearse by sharing your research or having a conversation with friends then ask key questions. Were you clear? What did they not understand? Was anything confusing?

When discussing your thesis with your supervisor after submission, remember that feedback has to drive action. Critical comments or things to think about must have real purpose behind them. If a method could be challenged then how could you respond? If X is open to interpretation then what can you do?

Time is limited after submission, so feedback needs to be limited too. To get good feedback ask questions that you really need responses to – and consider before you ask how you might act on them.

Nathan

Simulated

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Rehearsal for the viva is essential because it simulates some of the aspects of being there. If you’re nervous about how you will respond, what will come up or what it will feel like to be there then you can’t do better than rehearse in some way.

A mock viva is the best way to simulate the viva experience. Questions from experienced academics in a relevant field or disciplines. Time to think and be in a viva-like environment. Facing uncertainty of what the next question or opinion will be. You can practise what you will do and get a sense of how you might feel.

A mock viva, a simulation, however polished, can’t be as accurate or as good as the real viva. How will it differ from the real thing? You can’t know beforehand. You can simply be better prepared for talking to your examiners.

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