Daily viva help for PhDs
Compared to the start of your PhD journey, what can you do now that you couldn’t before?
How do you know this for certain? How can you demonstrate this? What are your skills as a capable researcher in your field?
Reflecting and unpicking the answers to these kinds of questions will give you a lot to share with your examiners in the viva.
“Plan, Do, Reflect, Review” is a simple framework for getting things done. Plan what you’ll do, do it, reflect on what happened and review things formally so you have a better understanding.
If you’re reading this post then hopefully you followed a similar process during your PhD. There are lots of systems, resources and processes that use Plan, Do, Reflect, Review to underpin how they work.
As you get close to your viva you’ll be leaning much more on reflect and review. Give yourself time to really take in what you did, what happened and what that means. Ask yourself questions and find answers that will help you communicate what matters to your examiners.
(reflecting and reviewing your journey also helps your confidence to grow by bringing your progress and capability into the spotlight!)
Thousands of hours of work.
Probably hundreds of papers read.
All the many, many attempts to do practical work related to your research. Depending on your field or discipline that could be experiments, interviews, simulations, observations, conversations, field work, lab work, library work and office work.
And then all the time spent writing, reading, re-drafting, editing, proofreading, spell-checking, re-writing again and again and finally feeling ready to submit.
(or at least able to submit!)
Throw in some viva preparations and you have done more than enough and then some more to be ready for your viva.
If you’re not ready for the challenge then who is?
Manage to keep going in difficult circumstances.
Manage, not struggle.
Difficult not almost-impossible.
Keep going – implying that you’re already in motion, this isn’t new.
I share this definition of survive in all my work. I want to emphasise to PhD candidates that surviving isn’t about life and death, swerving tragedy or overcoming mythic danger. A successful viva requires capability and results but surviving is really about determination. You show up and push forward and do what you need to with each new challenge.
It’s a hopefully helpful way to explore the viva and what’s involved but I’m not saying it’s easy.
Surviving the PhD might require difficult choices or exceptional effort. Getting ready for the viva could involve more work than you like or even a task you would rather avoid. The viva itself might be tough: challenging questions, longer than you would like and a deeper reflection on something than you want.
For all that you’ll succeed.
There’s work to do and you can do it.
There’s talent required and you have it.
It’s not easy but it’s nowhere near impossible. You can do this.
Keep going.
Frame your viva as the next challenge of your PhD.
It might even be the last challenge of your PhD. It’s certainly not the first. You’ve overcome many others to get this far.
Remind yourself of the challenges that you’ve passed. What made them difficult? What did you do to get past them? Exploring a difficult situation might initially remind you of stress but steer yourself to focus on the positives: look for evidence of your talent and effort to help drive a growing confidence.
While your viva could be last challenge of your PhD it won’t be your last challenge ever. As you finish your PhD journey consider what you’re taking with you. What can you apply from your PhD to all of your future challenges? How much better will you be for this process?
PS: if you’re looking for help as you get ready for this challenge then check out Viva Survivor, my upcoming live webinar on Wednesday 25th June. I have delivered this session to PhD candidates all around the UK at the request of doctoral colleges, but this is only the third time I’ve opened up registration. Viva Survivor is a 3-hour live webinar, you receive a catch-up recording and follow-up materials all about the viva, viva prep and getting ready. Do take a look and see if it could help you!
Hope is a good thing but we typically apply it to situations where our actions have little or no leverage. It’s probably not good to apply it to how we think about viva prep, building confidence or viva success.
Instead:
You don’t need to hope. You don’t need to wish for good luck.
Recognise you’ve done the work. Recognise that there is still work you can do.
Reflect on your PhD journey and think about any times that you felt friction in your research. Friction always tells you that there was something interesting:
Friction could also show that something just wasn’t working. Perhaps you needed to make a change. Perhaps you needed a different perspective.
Whatever the reason, if you find periods of your PhD where you’ve experienced friction then you’ve probably found something to reflect on ahead of your viva. There’s always something interesting to consider.
PS: if you’re looking for something else that’s interesting to consider, then take a look at the new issue of Viva Survivors Select. This is the second publication in my monthly pdf zine sharing a curated collection from the Viva Survivors archive. Take a look at The Uncertainty Issue for advice, practical suggestions and reflections to help with many concerning areas about the viva.
It might take you seconds to respond to a question in the viva.
It could take you minutes in preparation to review the point of a particular reference.
It will take several hours to engage with a mock viva – and several more to work through your actual viva.
By submission it has taken hundreds and hundreds of days to make something that matters for your thesis.
Across thousands of hours you become a more capable researcher. Over the course of months you complete your thesis. In the space of weeks you prepare for your viva. In a matter of hours you convince your examiners that you are enough and have done enough.
All of these are made up of moments – many, many moments – where you put yourself forward and where you do something that makes a difference.
PS: in case you missed it yesterday, the second issue of Viva Survivors Select is out now! This is my new monthly pdf zine sharing a curated collection from the Viva Survivors archive. Take a look at The Uncertainty Issue for advice, practical suggestions and reflections to help with the many concerning areas about the viva.
The notice of submission is more than a form with some dates on it. You’re saying I’m almost done.
Whatever work is still needed, now you really have a deadline. Now might be the time to start thinking about viva preparation and what you need from other people. If the selection of your examiners has not been decided then now is the time to talk to your supervisors and see what they are thinking.
And now is definitely the time, if you haven’t done so already, to read the regulations for your institution. Don’t assume you have a good handle on things because your friends and colleagues have told you bits and pieces: read the regulations, be sure for yourself and identify someone you can contact if you have any questions or if any problems occur between submission and the viva.
Start making lists when you hand in your notice of submission. What do you need? Who do you need it from? When do you need it?
And what’s your next step?
PS: one possible next step would be to check out the details for Viva Survivor, my upcoming live webinar on Wednesday 25th June. I’m regularly invited to deliver this session with PhD candidates all around the UK, but this is only the third time I’ve opened up registration like this. A 3-hour live webinar, catch-up recording and follow-up materials all about the viva, viva prep and getting ready. Do take a look and see if it might help you!
Hypothetical situations can be inherently stressful. We don’t like to think about them because we know that they’re not real right now – but know that they could be.
For example:
Whenever you’re faced with a situation like one of these you might feel overwhelmed or worried or confused. That’s a typical human response to a potentially stressful situation.
Whatever you feel you then have to decide: what will you do?
In some ways, the real point is that you can decide. You feel whatever you feel and then you can do something. You can choose in a moment of stress and uncertainty just as you have through all of the other moments of your PhD journey.
You can do something. There is always something you can do.