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Tag: reflection

Nathan

Devil’s Advocate

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Exploring how your research could be better while you prepare for the viva can be interesting. You’re not looking for fatal flaws, just inspecting your work and asking some critical questions. You’re not trying to anticipate criticisms in the viva, just think clearly about what you’ve done and what you could have done.

For example, thinking back, how could my PhD research have been better?

  • I could have learned C++ to make a good computer program for an algorithm I created.
  • I could have applied my results to other cases to see what was interesting.
  • I could have completed the big table of results that no-one else had done.
  • I could have finished those three other chapters.

Make sure you couple any critique with reasons why you didn’t do something different. So why didn’t I do any of these things that might have made my research better? Respectively:

  • I didn’t have time.
  • I didn’t think of some of those cases until I was writing up.
  • I wasn’t sure it was worth the effort.
  • I didn’t have time and wasn’t sure if there was something thesis-worthy in the ideas.

It could feel awkward to ask yourself how to make your work better, or ask yourself what’s wrong with it. Really, you’re just giving another check. It can also help to spot little things that need support with more ideas. Looking at your thesis with a different mindset is valuable. You’ve done a lot of good work by the time you submit.

Playing Devil’s Advocate is just taking a step back. You’re not thinking “This is rubbish, what’s wrong?” but “This is great, could it be even better?”

Nathan

There’s Always More

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Worried about whether or not you’ve done enough prep? Worried if you find a reference after submission that seems like it would be a good addition to your thesis? Worried that there’s something else that you just have to do before the viva?

Whenever I get stressed out and think I need to read more or do more, I remember a little line from Ecclesiastes 12:12. Probably 2500 years old and still relevant:

“…There is no end to the writing of books, and too much study will wear you out.”

You could read one more paper. You could check one more detail. Make one more note. But do you really need to?

At some point you just have to stop. Weigh it against everything else you’ve done, and you’ll find the right point.

Don’t exhaust yourself just because you’ve found one more thing you could do.

Nathan

Butterfly Wings

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Look back over your PhD. It may seem like a straight-line journey has brought you to the finish line. But that’s only one path. There may be lots of ways you could have gone, and lots of times things might not have worked out. What would you have done then?

It can be fruitful to explore this area by using questions. Some of these kinds of questions line up neatly with general areas your examiners might want to explore; others simply lead you to reflect on what you’ve done:

  • How else could you have started your project?
  • How could you have used different methods in your research?
  • How could you have made use of more resources?
  • How would you have managed with fewer resources?
  • How would you have coped if you’d not got the results you’d needed?
  • How else could someone interpret your results?
  • How would you do things differently knowing what you know now?

These kinds of questions help to explore your contribution and how you got it. They also help to strengthen your competence as a researcher.

Butterfly wings flap and the world changes. What then? How else could you have got through your PhD?

Nathan

VIVA and the Viva

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I’ve shared a few acronyms in posts over the last year but today’s tool is different because I invented it!

VIVA is very useful to help with exploring your thesis before the viva; it’s a directed thinking tool in the same way that SWOT is used to analyse a situation. VIVA can be used simply. Take a sheet of paper for a chapter in your thesis and divide it into four. Then use a different word in each section to direct your attention as you make notes about the chapter:

  • Valuable (to others): what would someone else find valuable in this chapter?
  • Interesting (to you): what interests you about the work?
  • Vague: what doesn’t seem clear when you read it?
  • Ask: what questions would you like to ask your examiners if you had the opportunity?

This can help to draw out key points for your thesis. If you do this kind of analysis for each chapter then you build a really interesting summary. From considering what’s Valuable you unpick the contribution that you’ve made in your thesis, and by thinking about what is Interesting you rediscover your motivations. If you look for what’s Vague then you find what you need to strengthen ahead of discussion in the viva, and if you consider what questions to Ask you think ahead about the way the conversation might unfold.

I came up with VIVA about four years ago and it’s become one of the most useful ideas I’ve shared in my workshops. I’m surprised in looking back over this first year of the blog that I’ve not shared it here before! I hope you find it helpful ahead of your viva, and find some interesting ideas when you analyse your thesis.

In short: use VIVA to help with the viva!

Nathan

Six Thousand Hours…

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…is my ballpark, back-of-the-napkin calculation for how much time someone might spend working on a PhD.

Compare that to two to three hours in the viva.

Three orders of magnitude difference and then some.

If you’re nervous about the viva: you’ve taken no shortcuts to get here. In and among those thousands of hours are lots of reasons why you’re up to the challenge ahead.

Nathan

Easter Eggs

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Not the chocolate kind, the DVD extras. The secrets. The small, special things that only certain people will look for or notice.

My thesis had a few Easter Eggs. As a mathematician, it was about proving much stronger results than I needed for my theorems. As a metaphor, I needed to boil an egg, but what I did was write a cookbook called Everything Eggs: An Infinite Recipe Book With Yolks.

On a few occasions in my thesis I was able to include little things that were much more impressive once you looked closer. Little things, nice, but not necessary, but a contribution in their own way.

What are the things you’re proud of in your work even if others might not find them or know to look? Where are they hidden? Why did you do them? What do they mean?

Your thesis and research Easter Eggs could help or delight lots of people if they find them. Don’t forget them when you review your progress. They add something special to your research journey.

Nathan

The Next Iteration

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The end of the PhD looms. If you were to do it all again, what would you do differently?

Where would you send and spend your focus?

What would you drop from your task lists?

What would you keep exactly the same?

How would you develop yourself?

What would you read?

When would you do it?

How would you work?

And why – why would you make the changes you’d make and keep the same the things you wouldn’t?

You’re not going to do another PhD (probably!). You won’t get to go around again. Experience and hindsight really are great teachers though. It’s not pointless to think about how you would approach the PhD again even though you (probably!) never will.

It’s just one way of asking yourself, “What have I learned from all of this?”

Nathan

Talents and Skills

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There are two main outputs from a PhD programme: a thesis and a person.

It’s easy to see what’s new in a thesis perhaps; less easy to see how a person has changed. Take time to explore your qualities as you get closer to the viva. A useful resource might be Vitae‘s Researcher Development Framework. It is partly a breakdown of all of the skills and attributes that an effective researcher might have, but there are lots of supporting tools for making sense of them too.

What can you do now that you couldn’t before your PhD? How are you now more skilled? And what are you going to do with your talents and skills when your PhD is over?

Nathan

Everest

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The viva is often framed as the top of the mountain after an epic climb. It’s taken a long time, a lot of work, but finally you reach the summit of your PhD. Some people take the story even further, “it’s all downhill from here, hahaha…”

I think it’s more accurate to see your thesis submission as the summit. The viva comes a little later. The viva is talking about the climb, how you did it, what worked, what didn’t and maybe how it compares to other climbs.

While you’re up at the summit though, pause, look around. What’s on the other side of your PhD-mountain? Where are you going to go next?

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