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Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2017: Questions

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I’m rounding 2017 off with five days of link sharing for five different areas I’ve posted on this year. Today we’re exploring posts about questions. I love using questions to help people unpick all sorts of aspects of the viva, from prep through to feelings and questions that candidates can work through and answer to get as ready as possible.

Questions help because they lead to answers. I like series of questions for digging into a topic, and hope to write more posts like this next year.

Found another post that you think is awesome? Let me know! And please share my best of 2017 posts with anyone who might need them. Retweets are always welcome!

Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2017: Viva Prep

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I’m rounding 2017 off with five days of link sharing for five different areas I’ve posted on this year. I’m starting today with the topic of viva prep which is something I think about every day. How can we best approach it? How can I help people think about it and then do something effective? Here’s a list of some of the best posts from 2017 to help with preparing for the viva!

I hope these posts are really useful for you. There are hundreds of posts on the blog from 2017, so go looking and see what you find.

Found something else on viva prep that you think is awesome? Let me know! And please share my best of 2017 posts with anyone who might need them. Retweets are always welcome!

Nathan

What Did You Learn?

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If that question seems too vague, consider:

  • What did you not know at the start of your PhD but know now?
  • What can you do now that you couldn’t at the start?
  • What were the false starts and dead ends that still helped?
  • What can you pass on to others?
  • What can you do to keep building on your talents?

A thesis has to have a significant, original contribution to knowledge. I think a PhD graduate has to have made a significant change in themselves to complete. What’s yours?

 

Nathan

Weather Report

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Last weekend the news promised Snowmageddon in the UK. 30cm of snow! Freezing temperatures! And as the cold weather arrived there were lots of shots of drifts, stuck cars, cancelled trains and more.

Meanwhile where we live, near the mouth of the Mersey, the snowfall wasn’t heavy and didn’t stick. We had clear paths on Monday morning. Even after a freezing night over Monday night there was just a little frost.

The weather report matters. Headlines are important. We need the big picture, but it’s important to dig in to the specifics, the really fine details. I think this is particularly true when examining how you feel about your thesis ahead of the viva. I would have honestly said I felt good about my thesis…

…except for Chapter Five. I knew I was unsure. I had questions I was still grappling with. The results were fine, but how I got there was all confused in my mind.

If you feel great about your thesis, is that really everywhere? If not, dig down, zero in, where are you not feeling good? Why?

If you’ve got doubts, again, is that with everything? Where are the bright spots? Why?

The national weather report won’t tell you what’s out your window. You have to look for yourself. And just having a general impression about how you feel about your thesis isn’t enough: get detailed!

Nathan

Commentary

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Behind the scenes extras on DVDs are interesting, but not for everyone. I’m a fan of commentary tracks. I like listening to a movie director explore influences, or explain why they made the choices they did. It’s fascinating, but I guess that most people will just want to watch the film.

When it comes to your thesis and your viva, you’re not “most people”. Annotating your thesis creates a valuable commentary that is doubly useful. First you ask yourself questions, engage with your thesis and make choices about how to add to the work. After that, you have an incredible resource you can refer to in your preparation and in the viva.

So read your thesis with pen in hand. What does that piece of jargon actually mean? Can you summarise this complex argument you make? How will you draw attention to typos? Which are the key references to highlight?

How will you make your thesis even more valuable?

Nathan

Unanswered

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As you get to the end of your PhD you might have some questions without answers. That doesn’t mean you’ve missed something. Three, four or seven years is a long time, but it’s still a finite period. You might not have been able to cover everything you wanted to.

Examiners can still be interested, and it’s likely that you are too. Make a list for your own benefit. Keep it clear. What’s your question and what got in the way of answering it?

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

Questioning Your Bibliography

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At the back of your thesis is a great big list of articles and sources that have helped your research. It can be massive. I’ve asked a lot of people about the size of their bibliography, and I regularly get answers in the region of two to three hundred papers. Someone once told me that their bibliography would have over 800 references!

Your examiners will likely have some questions for you about your literature review and bibliography. While you can’t predict all of them, you can still ask yourself some questions to help your preparation:

  • What are the top ten or twenty papers that have been useful to you?
  • Which papers have been most inspiring to you?
  • Have you cited your examiners, and what did you make of their research?
  • Which papers in your bibliography are most highly regarded?
  • What three or four categories could you group your bibliography in to?

Several hundred papers can be difficult to manage in your head. Questions can help to break that mental map up into something more realistic. These are a start, and are fairly generic. You know your research better than me, so think: what other questions might help?

Nathan

Making The Cut

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My thesis could be described as a collection of six chapters that all explored different niches in my field of maths. I have a couple of appendices that contain summaries of results and listings of computer code. It’s all self-contained and linked and good.

And still, nine years later, I have a folder with bits and pieces of at least three other chapters. Projects that didn’t end up getting finished. Ideas that fizzled out or didn’t come together. Every now and then I think, “What if…?” It would have been nice to adapt some of the techniques that I used to get one more result. It would have been cool to just push that bit further and classify one more type of mathematical object.

Except: there’s only so long to do a PhD. There’s only so much space in a thesis. There has to be some sense that Result A is worth more than Result B, that Potential Chapter X is a more powerful contribution than Potential Chapter Y. Your thesis is finite. You have to stop somewhere.

What doesn’t make the cut in your thesis?

Make a list of the half-projects and the maybes that didn’t quite make it. Make a list of the reasons why. Make a list of what you would need to do to take them further. Your examiners might not pick this thread up in the viva, but you’ll build up a good summary for yourself.

Leave it in a good enough state that one day you could pick it up and keep playing with it. If you’ve got plans to do this already, in your post-doc, in your spare time, that’s good. But if passing your PhD is your exit from academia, leave some notes just in case you want to explore later on.

You never know when inspiration will strike.

Nathan

A Good INTRO

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I used to be petrified of public speaking. I would only give talks during my PhD when I absolutely had to. I was always concerned that I would forget something, make a mistake or be asked a question for which I had no answer. I was even nervous about being too nervous!

Then I started a business where I had to present all of the time. My fears went partly because of regularly being in situations where I had to present, but also because I went out of my way to explore ways to give talks. I liked to find out about how to structure talks, particularly the beginnings. I knew that if I could get that right I’d feel good about the rest of the presentation, whether it was ten minutes or two hours.

A few years ago, my good friend Dr Aimee Blackledge shared an effective tool for starting talks with me. The tool is, fittingly, called INTRO and is an acronym to provide structure for the start of a presentation:

  • Interest: start by sharing something that will grab the audience’s attention, a fact, an image, a joke.
  • Need: say why what you’re going to talk about is important. Why does it need to be addressed?
  • Title: share the title of the talk.
  • Range: say something about how long you’ll speak for, what you might cover and how you want to handle questions.
  • Objective: close your introduction by sharing what your goal is with speaking. Is there something you want the audience to do as a result?

I really like how it helps start things off but also leads to a good overview. There’s a nice logic to it, and done well it can be a great start to a presentation. I think the five prompts also give a great format to create a summary of your research when it’s time to prepare for the viva.

  • Interest: how did you become interested in your field of research?
  • Need: what need does your thesis address?
  • Title: what is your thesis’ title, and why?
  • Range: what does your thesis cover?
  • Objective: what do you hope that someone would know, think or do after reading it?

Give INTRO a try when you next prepare a talk, see if it helps. Try it too when your viva is on the way to help break down what your work is all about.

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