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Nathan

Curated Confidence

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Confidence follows from honestly reflecting on your work and achievements. You have to explore and remind yourself that you have done well. To build confidence for your viva you can look back over your PhD and see the effort you’ve invested and the progress you’ve made and hopefully feel good.

It won’t help to hold on to everything though.

You learn from your mistakes and setbacks, but don’t bring those in to the gallery of recollections. Like a curator, pick and choose which things to focus on. You can find confidence by focussing on what has helped you the most or the work where you notice the most growth.

You don’t need to try to remember everything to find confidence for your viva. Explore your PhD journey, then arrange a gallery of the best bits. Curate your confidence for your viva.

Nathan

Begin Again

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If you could start your PhD over would you?

  • If you could start over, what would you keep the same?
  • What would you change?
  • What other options would you consider?
  • What kind of an impact would changes make?
  • And how much of what you would change – or keep the same – are you only able to see with hindsight?

You can’t begin again – but considering this kind of thought exercise can be helpful to unpack your experience, your growth and the development of your research before your viva.

Nathan

Dots

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Postgraduate researchers collect, connect and communicate dots.

(let me explain)

Dots are raw bits and pieces of research. The papers you read. The ideas you have and test. The practical research you do.

You collect a lot of dots on your PhD journey. You sift and sort your collected dots and decide which ones matter.

You have to connect them in a way that makes sense. Sometimes you make them make sense. You write and think and write some more. You connect the dots as you bring your thesis together.

Your thesis communicates the meaning of all these collected and connected dots but you need more than that for a PhD. You also have to communicate the meaning in your viva.

You collect, connect and communicate the dots. You do a lot of really useful and valuable work to make the world more known and more interesting.

Thank you for all that you do!

 

(inspired by a Seth Godin post that has been rattling around in my head for a while!)

Nathan

Three Cups Of Tea

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That’s what I need to work well: whether or not I’m sitting to write, prepare, make art or deliver a webinar, I need to have three cups of tea running through my system.

Or, at least, that’s what I tell myself.

Of course, when I go to do any work I have experience, ability, resources, equipment and a plan of some kind. I have a lot more than just three cups of tea. I have systems for different tasks, music and objects that help me focus, scheduling for particular work and backup plans in case things aren’t going quite right.

But the three cups of tea are a prompt. They are a trigger: if you have this then you can work well – and it’s something I can have relatively simply.

What do you need for your viva? Give it some thought. You’re overwhelmingly likely to succeed. You have years of experience, ability, a thesis, preparation and expectations.

What could you do to help steer you even closer to feeling good for your viva?

Nathan

Year One

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How far have you come from the researcher you were in the first year of your PhD?

  • I remember that I was always nervous before meeting my supervisor – afraid that I would be found out.
  • I remember never quite understanding the terms in the papers I was reading – and worried because I found other papers to read but wasn’t sure if I should spend time on them.
  • I remember spending hours and hours feeling stuck with my main project – and spending hours and hours on little side projects that didn’t quite come together.

Which left me wondering if I was going to make it through my first year, never mind the rest of my PhD.

By the end of my PhD I was definitely doing things differently:

  • I remember going to meetings no longer nervous. Maybe I wasn’t exactly confident but I could say and show that I was making progress.
  • I remember still not understanding everything in the papers I was using but I felt that I knew enough.
  • I remember spending hours and hours finishing my thesis – and only a few hours considering what I would have to leave out to make it happen.

What I didn’t see at the time was the difference between how I was at the end of my PhD and how I had been in year one.

I can see it now. Doing things well or better helped – but knowing that I had made progress and really feeling that would have made a huge difference to my confidence.

As you get closer to your viva take time to reflect on the difference between who you are now and who you were when you started your PhD.

 

PS: How has your thesis contribution grown from the beginnings of your PhD journey? The latest issue of Viva Survivors Select, The Contribution Issue, has lots of ideas for reflecting on your work. Take a look if you’re looking for more viva prep help!

Nathan

What-How-Why

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When you look back at a difficulty you overcame during your PhD, consider:

  • What was the problem?
  • How did you resolve it?
  • Why did this have an impact?

It’s all too human to gather problems together into a big pile of negativity. Looking back at PhD challenges and problems it can be all too easy to be overwhelmed.

Instead, get focussed and specific when you think back on PhD problems. Focus on one problem at a time. Use the questions above to help you get past any lingering concerns.

Get things sorted so that you can then focus on the far more important and helpful things that you want to talk about at your viva.

 

(offered as another tool in the mould of Why-How-What!)

 

PS: The latest issue of Viva Survivors Select 12, The Contribution Issue aligns with the kind of reflection I’m talking about in today’s post. Overcoming difficulties and problems correlates with making contributions. Find more reflections and tools in the new issue!

Nathan

Today & Tomorrow

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You can’t change the past even if you wanted to.

You don’t get a do-over if you faced difficulties in your PhD or have regrets for something that could have been – or if you simply know more now than you did then.

Whatever happened, whatever the reason, today you can change course. Today you can decide that the past doesn’t define you. You can go a different way.

Today you can change course and tomorrow you can take action. And, importantly, you can do this again and again, steering yourself closer and closer to who you want to be for your viva.

So what do you want to achieve for yourself before your viva? How do you want to present yourself and your research at your viva? How might you change course? And what will you do to get to your destination?

 

PS: my final 7 Reasons You’ll Pass Your Viva webinar is running tomorrow morning, Wednesday 15th July 2026 at 11am. This is my last webinar before my summer break – so I’ve decided I’m really going to make it a good one! 😉 Registration includes a catch-up recording, follow-up email and my pdf guide 101 Steps To A Great Viva. Hope to see you there.

Nathan

A Problem

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When you have a problem in your research there are a lot of questions that someone could ask.

  • Why is it a problem?
  • How is it a problem?
  • When did you realise you had a problem?
  • Did you resolve it? How did you do this? Did you have to try anything else first? And can you think of any other way you might have approached it?
  • Was this a one-time problem? A recurring problem? Is there literature about this kind of problem – or even this specific problem?
  • What does it mean to resolve this problem?
  • How have you felt the impact of the problem?
  • How would you advise someone else who faces this problem or similar in the future?

When you have a problem in your research there are a lot of questions that someone could ask – and someone could be one of your examiners.

Consider the problems you’ve faced in your PhD before you go to your viva. The fact that you have faced problems is not negative: it means there plenty of things to talk about which can demonstrate your capability.

Nathan

A Final Conversation

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That’s what my viva was.

Of course, I have told people about my research in the years since, but I moved away from my research discipline into different work. Since June 2008 I’ve never had the opportunity to talk about my PhD research with knowledgeable people who really wanted to know more.

(I’ve had plenty of small chats with polite people who probably regretted asking, “So what did you do for your PhD?”)

I don’t have any regrets but I didn’t know that was going to be the final real conversation I’d have about my PhD work. Your future plans might give you some confidence that there will be plenty more times to come when you can discuss all of what you’ve done…

…but if you’re not sure then please consider: if your viva was the final substantive conversation you would have about your PhD research what would you want to make sure you talk about?

Nathan

The Five Ends

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The first is the end of your research. At some point, even if you’re figuring things out while writing, you have to stop doing practical research work.

The second is the end of writing your thesis. You submit your thesis, knowing that it’s probably not perfect but accepting that you’ve done all you can to make it good.

The third end is the end of your viva. Hours have passed after weeks of prep and you’ve succeeded! But you’re not quite done.

The fourth is the end of your corrections. You can hope you get none but most people get some. You likely will too. I hope it’s a smooth process for you!

The fifth and final end of your PhD journey is the opportunity for graduation. You might attend or might not but that’s the final, final end of your PhD. After that you’re officially Dr Someone.

That’s the end of your PhD and the beginning of the next chapter.

 

PS: you can find out more about the end of the PhD at my 7 Reasons You’ll Pass Your Viva webinar tomorrow evening, Wednesday 8th July 2026 at 7pm. Registration includes a catch-up recording, follow-up email and my pdf guide 101 Steps To A Great Viva. Hope to see you there – but if tomorrow is too short notice I have one more webinar next week!

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