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Tag: norms

Nathan

Disciplinary Expectations

Daily Post

Regulations and general viva expectations are helpful to steer viva prep. They can also impact how you think and feel about your viva.

Take a little extra time to check and be sure whether there are any particular expectations within your discipline:

  • Are you more likely to have a different examiner setup?
  • Might you be more or less likely to have an independent chairperson?
  • Is it typical for people from your department or discipline to give a presentation at the start of the viva?
  • Are vivas in your field more likely to be quite long – or quite short?
  • And are there any general questions that seem common?

Ask around. Explore the expectations, if there are any, that seem particularly prevalent in your area. A little extra knowledge can only help you as you prepare for your viva.

 

PS: Need to know more of what to expect at your viva? Follow my Eventbrite page to get notified of upcoming independent viva help webinars!

Nathan

Exceptional

Daily Post

There are viva regulations for your institution, general experiences from the massive number of vivas that happen every year and the particular practices of your department. Together, these combine to give a picture of what to expect at the viva. You can have a good sense of what a viva is supposed to be like by taking all of these into account.

There are always exceptions.

Most vivas have two examiners – apart from the ones that have three. Most examiners are academics at other universities – apart from the ones that aren’t. Most vivas up to 2020 were in-person – apart from the ones that weren’t, and then apart from all the ones that suddenly weren’t!

Your viva might be exceptional too. You might have done something a little different in your research or created outputs that most PhD candidates would not. Your thesis might be different. Your viva day might start differently. You could have requirements that many candidates never think about.

Exceptions change the viva but don’t change the purpose. Exceptions might shape your viva but they don’t alter the overall process.

Vivas are always unique and the exceptional people who have them are uniquely positioned to succeed whatever the circumstances.

Nathan

Generalisations

Daily Post, Sabbatical

Be careful when you come to generalise your probable viva experience.

Regulations, viva stories and hearing about vivas from your department all have a role to play in building up your personal expectations. Be sure you have enough suitable information to build your expectations.

This idea also counts for when you think about your work.

You can’t generalise past experiences and responses to your research directly to your viva. Seminars, and past discussions don’t dictate what your examiners might make of your research. If you’ve had tricky meetings or difficult conference talks in the past that doesn’t have to define your future viva experience.

 

Read regulations, ask people you can trust and build up a good picture of what to expect. Reflect on your journey and remember that you have grown throughout the process.

You are capable, you are good enough and you must have made something by now.

That’s a reasonable generalisation to make about someone close to their viva.

 

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 November 11th 2023.

Nathan

Behaving As Expected

Daily Post

PhD candidates can get a sense of what to expect for their viva from reading their institution’s regulations, learning about general viva experiences and asking about recent vivas in their department.

Together these create expectations.

Some expectations will be really clear, like knowing the people who will be examining. Others will cover a range of possibilities, like expecting the viva to be longer than two hours. Some aspects may be unknown but a candidate can still get a sense of the situation: you might not know the first question but will still have an idea of what examiners typically ask.

Viva expectations prompt behaviour. This sort of thing will happen so I will do this to be ready.

Consider what you know about the viva and how that can help you as you prepare.

Nathan

Generalisations

Daily Post

Be careful when you come to generalise your probable viva experience.

Regulations, viva stories and hearing about vivas from your department all have a role to play in building up your personal expectations. Be sure you have enough suitable information to build your expectations.

This idea also counts for when you think about your work.

You can’t generalise past experiences and responses to your research directly to your viva. Seminars, and past discussions don’t dictate what your examiners might make of your research. If you’ve had tricky meetings or difficult conference talks in the past that doesn’t have to define your future viva experience.

 

Read regulations, ask people you can trust and build up a good picture of what to expect. Reflect on your journey and remember that you have grown throughout the process.

You are capable, you are good enough and you must have made something by now.

That’s a reasonable generalisation to make about someone close to their viva.

Nathan

Cracking The Code

Daily Post

Information about the viva sometimes seems hidden but that doesn’t mean you can’t figure out what it all means.

  • Read the regulations for how vivas are conducted. What do you need to do?
  • Look for stories of viva success to see common expectations. What’s helpful to know?
  • Ask your friends about their recent experiences to explore common practices in your department. What can you prepare for?

There’s no secret code or process to the viva. It’s not hidden, the information is out there, but if you don’t explore and ask then you might find yourself wondering how to decode the rumours you hear.

Nathan

Vivas Have Structure

Daily Post

Every building has multiple blueprints or plans. On one plan are the walls, but another diagram shows where pipes and cables go.

If you compare building plans for different buildings you’ll notice similarities and differences, but look closer and you’ll see common structures.

Certainties for what you would find.

 

Vivas are based on regulations, expectations and norms.

  • Universities set thesis examination regulations.
  • Expectations rise from the general stories in academic culture.
  • Your department finds norms, the “good practice” ways of the viva.

All three give the viva structure. Every viva is unique because every thesis and candidate are unique but vivas tend towards patterns of experience.

You can make predictions and have expectations of what your viva will be like. You’ll have to wait until viva day to know exactly what it’s like.

Every viva is unique – but that doesn’t make yours a big unknown.

Nathan

Map, Compass, Landmarks

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A map can show you all of an area, but to use it well you need either a compass or to have sight of some landmarks. The map won’t show every detail, but can show things that you can’t otherwise see. A compass helps to give you a direction to follow. Landmarks are useful to highlight your position.

This situation is, in some ways, similar to how someone can get a feel for what the viva is like.

The regulations for your university show a lot, but to really get a sense of what they mean in practice you need to find out about the general experiences of PhD candidates – or find out more specifically about vivas in your department. Regulations describe the big picture. Viva stories can help you to understand what to expect – and knowing about vivas in your department can help you see the hyperlocal practice where you are.

Regulations help you to map out the way things are supposed to be. Viva stories give you a direction to follow. Stories from your department give you the landmarks to know exactly where you are.

Nathan

The Map Is Not The Territory

Daily Post

Regulations can give you the general shape of the viva, the broad understanding of the process. Stories shape big expectations, and the stories of your friends and colleagues can help you see the norms, the common practices in your department.

This is the map of the viva landscape: it could have lots detail, but it’s only a representation. All of the regulations, expectations and norms that you understand – and it’s worth taking the time to find them out – won’t be able to tell you exactly what is going to happen in your viva.

You’ll only appreciate the territory, your viva, when you’re there, when it’s in front of you. There you’ll see the unique features, the slight changes, the parts that stand out to you that others didn’t mark or notice.

The map is not the territory, but the map is still useful. You can help update it after your viva. Once your viva is done, the corrections are in and you’re getting ready to move on to life after the PhD, find ways to share your own experiences to help someone else get a sense of what is ahead of them.

(another post inspired by The Great Mental Models by Shane Parrish!)

Nathan

Want/Need

Daily Post

In the UK, wanting to be a PhD means needing to have a viva.

A lot could be done to help postgraduate researchers be prepared for the viva – even from the early stages of the PhD – if we helped people see that the viva is just another part of the process, like a literature review or an annual report or even a meeting with a supervisor. It’s just something that needs to happen.

And like lit reviews, reports and meetings, vivas are different for individuals too.

Unique, in fact.

There can be expectations and norms, but always differences. There’s lots and lots of general advice for PhDs based on useful structures that broadly apply – for writing, doing research, being a researcher – and then every PGR has to make sense of those for them, their research, their PhD.

You need all those things to be a PhD. You need your viva too. If you feel resistance towards it, for any reason, then you have to be responsible for working past it. What steps could you take to steer your perception towards the viva?

How can you see it not as some terrible thing, not perhaps even as the final milestone, but just one more necessary part of the process of becoming a PhD?

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