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Nathan

Building On Difficult Circumstances

Daily Post

Every PhD contains difficult circumstances. Reflecting on how you get through them – how you keep going – is a useful way to explore how you have you grown and how you can approach future challenges.

(because you will definitely face challenges in the future)

Writing about the challenges you’ve faced can be a good way to think through your PhD journey and what it means. Bring to mind one of the difficult circumstances you’ve overcome. Then reflect and respond to these questions in sequence:

  • Why did you face difficult circumstances?
  • When did this happen during your PhD?
  • What was the impact of the situation?
  • Who did you turn to for support?
  • How did you overcome the circumstances?

Thinking about the whys and hows of a situation – particularly how you overcame it – can be helpful for the future. Thinking about why something happened and what you can do differently can prevent similar circumstances from occurring again. Thinking about what you have learned as a result can help you to feel more capable when dealing with problems.

Recognising that you overcame a significant challenge can help you to feel confident when you find yourself confronting challenges in the future.

(because, again, you will definitely face challenges in the future!)

Every PhD candidate encounters difficult circumstances. It’s a part of the journey towards completing a doctorate.

Difficult circumstances don’t have to define who you are and how you go about your research but reflecting on them can be helpful as you work towards completing your PhD.

Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2025: Surviving

Daily Post

It’s the last day of 2025 and my last day to share some of my favourite posts of 2025.

The blog is called Viva Survivors, so we have to have posts about surviving!

I also have to shout out These Interesting Times, a post from March that looked back at the last five years. How have you made it this far? What helped you manage to keep going in difficult circumstances throughout your PhD journey and particularly over the last five years?

 

Finally for 2025, if you’re looking for some more thoughts on surviving then take a look at The Survival Issue, the most recent curated collection of Viva Survivors Select!

Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2022: Surviving

Daily Post

Well done! If you’re reading this you did it. You made it through another tough year. You survived 2022. Was it more challenging than previous years for you? How are you coping? And how ready are you for 2023?

2022 was the year I finally got COVID (thankfully not too serious and thankfully long recovered now). 2022 was the year I celebrated five years of publishing this blog. I shared another post marking how different life has become. And 2022 was another year where I continued to share thoughts on surviving on this blog, because I think it helps with the context of the viva and what someone has to do to succeed.

  • Verbs For The Viva – words matter, so it helps to keep the right ones in mind.
  • Not To Plan – an encouragement about what the last few years might mean…
  • Disrupted & Different – …and some more thoughts about preparing for a pandemic-influenced viva.
  • One More Time – that’s what the viva is, one more time after many times before.
  • Keep Going – two words that are worth exploring.

Another year. Again, well done.

Tomorrow we start a new one. You know what you need to do. You can decide how you will do it. Keep focussed on why you’re doing it and you’ll get there.

PS: the Viva Survivors blog celebrated five years of daily posts earlier this year! To mark the journey so far I wrote and published “Keep Going – A Viva Survivors Anthology” – a curated collection of the best of the first five years. If you’re looking for viva help then this blog is and always will be free – if you want to support the blog and get an awesome book as well, then take a look at the options at the link. Thanks!

Nathan

Surviving

Daily Post

Survive means manage to keep going in difficult circumstances. In some ways I feel like this is quite a mundane definition, almost boring: it doesn’t capture the flavour of what people tend to think about survival. Over time we have skewed survive to only mean situations where life is threatened and nearly all hope is lost.

Survive implies, I think, a challenge that is being worked through. It feels like the best verb to describe the kind of challenge being overcome in the PhD viva: it’s not a new challenge, it’s not impossible, it’s not supposed to be a struggle. It applies to the PhD as well, of course, though the challenge is bigger, for longer and can take many forms.

Manage to keep going in difficult circumstances sometimes doesn’t capture the nuance of the difficulty or the challenge. It doesn’t account for how someone might feel about their PhD or viva. It’s still the best verb I can think of for describing how someone can engage with the circumstances of their viva.

Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2020: Surviving

Daily Post

2020 hasn’t been an easy year, has it? 2021 feels like it’s going to be tough too.

There are still challenges and changes ahead of us all. As with the viva, to begin with, we’re called to survive – which means “manage to keep going in difficult circumstances“. 

  • Interesting Times – I wrote this post on March 16th, before the first lockdown in the UK, but after we had started our own family lockdown. This was an extra post for that day, written out of a need to share something.
  • New Expectations? – the viva is all online now, for now at least. That doesn’t mean that it’s bad, but it’s different.
  • No Hurry, No Pause – not a post explicitly on surviving, but the linked resource resonates, as do some of the questions which are mentioned.
  • Fortunate Positions – I share a story that explores both why and how people survive in the viva…
  • By The Numbers – …and some questions to explore that idea a little more.
  • Is Survival Enough? – a question I’ve been reflecting on a lot lately.

Surviving might be uncomfortable sometimes. It might be at odds with your preferences or skillset. But there are reasons you’ve got this far; reasons that have helped you through these difficult circumstances. Remember them and keep going.