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Tag: reflection

Nathan

Puzzles & Problems

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During my PhD I became obsessed with certain kinds of puzzles. Killer sudoku is a variant on regular sudoku with different conditions on the grid. I would spend hours and hours playing them. I infected my friends with the killer sudoku bug. For a time we would compete to solve them, nothing but our honour and bragging rights at stake.

We discovered kakuro puzzles. We lost weeks of lunch breaks when a Scrabble clone was launched on Facebook. We turned our brains to becoming office champion. While I wouldn’t say I was champ, I still feel proud at earning 390 points in a two-player game once!

Puzzles are awesome. They teach the skills and processes to help solve problems. A PhD is a mix of puzzles and problems. In some cases you do things to practise a method or explore an already understood idea. Then later you apply what you know to something that’s a problem: something that’s believed to be true or which people think there is something interesting but which isn’t known for certain.

All of my play with killer sudoku and kakuro helped me. My mind raced faster looking for connections in my research. I used notation from puzzles to solve research problems. Bizarrely, playing a lot of Scrabble made it easier for me to focus on problems.

Puzzles and problems go hand in hand. When the viva comes around, you can take all you’ve learned in with you. All of the skill you amass from playing and exploring and researching. It doesn’t go away. It’s right there, a rich resource to draw on.

Think about all of the puzzles and problems you’ve encountered. With everything you do during a PhD, is it really that likely your examiners can find something that will be out of your reach?

Nathan

Three Acts

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In short:

  • Beginning: ideas and talent…
  • Middle: work and wondering…
  • End: knowledge and skill…

However you feel in the middle of the PhD, you’re in the right place for fortune to find you. You started and people agreed that this was a good path for you. When you finish you’ve necessarily built up a body of research and skill to match.

If you’re reading this at the start of the PhD, you’re supposed to be here. If you’re in the middle, hang in there. If you’re near the end, congratulations. Keep going. You can’t get to where you are just by being lucky. You can’t finish a PhD by accident.

Nathan

Different Audiences

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Here’s a thirty minute viva prep exercise. It aims to help you think differently about your thesis by considering how you could communicate your work with other people. All you need is something to write on and write with.

Take 5 minutes to make general notes, first thoughts about your research and how you share it with others.

Take 5 minutes to plot out a conference talk about your best work. What must you include?

Take 5 minutes to sketch a thirty minute talk at a local high school. How would you begin?

Take 5 minutes to brainstorm for a Three Minute Thesis talk. What would you have to cut out of your normal explanations?

Take 5 minutes to think about your elevator pitch. What would you say if you were in a lift with the head of your university?

Finally, take 5 minutes to review. What ideas or themes consistently showed up? What surprised you? What can you do with these ideas now? How does this help you to frame your work for others?

Exploring different perspectives and looking at your work in a fresh way is valuable. Make time to take a step back in your viva preparations and consider what someone else might think of your thesis. And think: you have the outline for four or five different kinds of talks about your work now. Why not give one of them?

Nathan

Either Way

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If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re probably right.

(Henry Ford probably said something like this, but he probably heard something like it from someone else; see here)

A reflection for today: if your viva is coming up, honestly, truthfully, do you think you can pass it? If you do, what are you going to do to make it a certainty? If you think you can’t, what are you going to do to get help? Either way, what are you going to do?

Nathan

How To Juggle

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One of my heroes, Seth Godin, describes in one of his books why people struggle when they learn to juggle. Wannabe jugglers focus so much on trying to catch balls that they don’t throw them enough. They want the catch to be perfect so they hesitate. The secret, as he shares it, is that you need to throw the ball a lot more and not worry about a perfect catch. Better to start the action first before worrying about how you’ll complete it. Seth’s really talking about projects, and fear, and hesitating before making something good. Every project is throwing the ball from right hand to left, a chance to do something well.

PhDs unfold over a long period of time. A PhD is like a big project, but it’s wrong to see it as a single throw of a ball. There’s so much more involved. Like juggling, you get good at doing the PhD by doing it. Reading more, writing more, doing more. Each step is a single throw. When you’re near submission or the viva you’ve caught the ball a lot. You must have become good at doing your research. You must have become good at being a researcher.

The viva is a big deal. It’s normal to be nervous. If you’re feeling uncertain, reflect on your skills. Reflect on your progress. Reflect on what exists now that didn’t exist when you started your PhD. Your thesis didn’t just happen: you’ve made a lot of catches.

Nathan

Salmon Swimming

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I had an idea for explaining the PhD process, a picture in my head that I described to my wife:

Me: “PhD candidates are like salmon, swimming upstream to the source of ideas. It’s a difficult journey, long and tiring, but at the end-”

Mrs R: “They’re eaten by bears? Are examiners like bears?”

Me: “Erm, no. Well, I guess you could say-”

Mrs R: “I think a lot of salmon don’t make it. I’m sure I read that. Swimming against the current kills some salmon just for trying.”

Me: “…”

Mrs R: “And then some of the salmon that make it get eaten. By bears.”

Me: “…”

There are lots of metaphors and analogies that work in describing the PhD journey and the viva. They’re useful because they give us something to hook into. They can set expectations or help us through tough times. Find one that helps you.

But please don’t be a salmon.

Nathan

Diamonds

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You need pressure to make diamonds. It’s cheesy, but maybe you need the pressure of viva questions to find certain insights. I’ve lost track of the number of times someone has told me that they found new ideas through talking to their examiners. Sometimes a new connection or way of explaining something.

Viva pressure can produce amazing results, but it can seem overwhelming, particularly as the day draws near. If you feel nervous or anxious, remember that you also need time to make diamonds. Viva questions might seem pressured sometimes, but you can take time to answer them. There is no need to rush to respond. Listen to the question, think about it, make a note: you don’t have to have the whole answer when you start to speak. Start, and see where the discussion goes.

Nathan

Soundbites

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It’s cool when you can summarise your research in a tweet. I loved the challenge of explaining my work so that a layperson could understand.

I explore ways to tell apart complicated knotted structures. For my PhD, I found several new processes and results using maths!

There might be some value in breaking down your chapters or key results into soundbites, as a reflective exercise. You could start off with 100 words to summarise a chapter, then try to do it in 25. Could you explain a chapter in ten words? You’d lose something, but it could help you to think through what’s important.

Just remember: this might help you to reflect on your work, but you’ll need more words to tell your research story to your examiners. You can’t predict all of their questions ahead of time, but you can be sure that they want more than a quip.

Nathan

3 Questions You’ll Never Be Asked…

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…but you might get a lot of help from considering them:

  • What do you not want to talk about in your viva?
  • Following on from that, why do you not want to talk about it?
  • What would you say if it did come up?

Your examiners won’t ask these questions, but answers to them will help you. Reflect on your thesis and research journey. What do you not want to focus on?

Nathan

Ten Out Of Ten

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How would you score yourself when it comes to your PhD? I would give the me-from-ten-years-ago maybe a seven. I got results, but I was careless at reading papers and I didn’t speak up often enough when I didn’t understand something.

I think I would have stretched to an eight if I could have thought more about the structure of my thesis, maybe if I’d read a few more examples to see how others had done it. A nine would have been if I had really unpicked and understood the theoretical background of Chapter 5. I don’t know what a ten would look like for me…

How about you? Your examiners aren’t going to give you a score or grade like this, but if you can honestly reflect then maybe you can give yourself a boost. If you’re, say, a seven now, what would help you to score an eight? If you rate yourself an eight for viva prep, how do you get closer to ten?

Think about how you can make a difference for yourself.

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