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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

Onions

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Peel an onion layer back carefully and there’s more underneath. Again and again, not infinitely but quite a way. It takes patience and effort to go down layer by layer.

The same’s true with your research. One can see the end result, but with patience and effort you can dig deep into what’s there. It’s built on a lot. You can ask why many times. So can your examiners. They can dig deep and explore motivations, assumptions, the fundamentals. It’s not for fun, it’s for their understanding and to show yours.

You can be ready for the viva by digging below the surface, prepare by examining the background. Test your assumptions. Remember why your work is valuable. You don’t need to go too deep though, going further and further, ad infinitum. That way lies a lot of tears.

Which brings us back to onions.

Nathan

Where Did I Hear That…?

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I listen to a couple of podcasts quite regularly – The Tim Ferriss Show and Revisionist History are both favourites of mine – and on one recently I heard someone say something that lodged in my head as being quite useful:

Regular review readily resolve random readings.

Ironically, I can’t remember where I heard this! But it is definitely good advice. I lost track of the number of times during my PhD where I thought, “Oh, I know this, now where…” and just couldn’t find the reference. You are hopefully doing better than me. You are hopefully managing your references well.

As you’re preparing for your viva, think about how you can summarise your key references. Think about how you can make a good overview of the key points of your argument and your results. You have a lot of this floating in your head, but if you systematically review what you’ve done and where it comes from the information and ideas will be easier to access. Make time to review things several times. It doesn’t have to be every day, but consider making it a habit.

Think about how you might do all this in a way that works for you – then do it.

Nathan

Plus, Minus, Interesting

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I like to use thinking tools, and “Plus, Minus, Interesting” is a good concept by Edward de Bono. To put it simply, it’s just a request to look at things from different perspectives: look for positives, negatives and interesting features, don’t just examine something with whatever gut feeling you have.

I can think of lots of ways to use it when preparing for the viva:

  • Explore the methodology you used to do your research. Why was it good to do it the way that you did? What did it not allow you to do? What’s interesting about it?
  • If you find a passage that is unclear, use “plus, minus, interesting” to reframe the vague text.
  • Create a summary for each chapter, a single page divided into three sections. Plus for important things, minus for difficult parts, interesting for things that others might find, erm, interesting.
  • Use “plus, minus, interesting” to provoke an analysis or discussion of the main outcomes of your thesis.

This is just one flexible tool. There are others! Use what you can to explore your research in new ways. It’s good prep to think differently about your thesis before the viva.

Nathan

Hurry?

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I realised the other day that I often advise people to take their time when it comes to the viva.

Plan how you’re going to prepare.

Invest time in reading your thesis carefully.

Don’t rush to an answer in the viva.

It got me wondering, are there any areas of viva prep or thesis examination where it would be good to rush?

Well, there are things that you can do quickly, but they’re not so much about rushing as they are about doing specific tasks. Dash out some bullet points about a chapter when you start a summary file; spend two minutes to put a Post It at the start of each chapter in your thesis; write down the first five researchers you can think of whose work you build on.

You can do these quickly and then develop them: write a summary, add Post Its to other important areas, expand your researcher list. You’re not rushing, you’re starting.

I can’t think of a good reason to rush in preparation or in the viva…

…but maybe after the viva you want to hurry to tell someone your good news?

Nathan

Why-How-What

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If you’re looking for a way to share a summary of your research, as you might in the viva, think Why-How-What:

  • Why is your topic worth researching?
  • How have you gone about researching it?
  • What have you found?

Every time you give a summary of your work you get to try new ways to communicate what’s important. These questions are only the beginning, you might want to elaborate. You have to start somewhere though.

Nathan

Colour Your Thinking

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I’m a fan of Edward de Bono, and I love his Six Thinking Hats concept. It’s a way to manage discussions or problem solving. You can check out the details if you like; in short, you can imagine people putting on coloured hats to drive different kinds of thinking or observations. This stops people taking over with a particular agenda and prevents a certain emphasis being put on discussion.

Six Thinking Hats is a useful solo review tool for your thesis too. As each colour of hat corresponds to a certain kind of thinking you can explore your research in a different and useful way. For example, you might make some notes about a chapter in the following sequence of thinking:

  • White Hat: what is this chapter about?
  • Blue Hat: what process or method drives it forward?
  • Red Hat: how do you feel about the material in it?
  • Yellow Hat: what is good about this chapter?
  • Black Hat: what could be better?
  • Green Hat: where are the opportunities to build on this work?

If different coloured hats sounds silly, just take these six questions in sequence as a way to unpick some thoughts about your thesis!

Nathan

Prompts

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Sometimes a blank page can be beaten with prompts. If you want to get thoughts flowing, try the following:

  • The best paper I read during my PhD was…
  • The best advice my supervisor gave me was…
  • My greatest strength as a researcher is…
  • The best part of my thesis is…
  • The most valuable part of my work is…
  • Between now and the viva I need to…
  • To feel confident in the viva I need to…

If you come across any more prompts for thinking about your thesis, make a note of them. Use them yourself or pass them on to others. Keep thinking.

Nathan

Kanji

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I picked up a little Japanese on my past travels. Well, enough to ask for directions, say I don’t understand and enquire after an English menu.

I never picked up any familiarity with kanji or what different symbols mean. The jōyō kanji list is the 2136 most common characters that people need to know. As I understand it, if you can read and comprehend all of them, then you can fully engage with day-to-day life in Japan. You can browse a newspaper, understand signs and read government documents.

To get a picture of your thesis, what would someone need to know? I don’t mean what papers do they need to have read or specialist knowledge. What do they need to understand? What elements must they get a grasp of?

And while you don’t need to have perfect recall of your entire thesis, there must be some parts which you need to know. What are they? While you might want to try to remember things, it makes sense to make some notes. Maybe write a list to start, then see how it fills out.

Hopefully it won’t run to 2136 points.

Nathan

Brew

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I work from home a lot. When I go to the kitchen and boil the kettle I like to dry any dishes in the rack; it feels like a good way to use the minute or so while the water gets to 100 degrees, and the time after that while the tea brews. It makes an incremental difference, less dishes to do later in the day.

While I think viva prep is best done in meaningful chunks, there are some tasks that can be done in a couple of minutes which can make a difference. Three examples:

  • You can break down why a particular paper in your bibliography is valuable to your research.
  • You can brainstorm keywords for themes in a chapter.
  • You can carefully pick through a page looking for anything that seems vague or unclear.

None of these involve deep thought. None of them will take a long time. All of them can add a little something to how well you’re prepared.

As can staying appropriately caffeinated…

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