Defending & Supporting
Defending your thesis means supporting your research.
Defending doesn’t mean protecting. Your examiners’ comments and questions aren’t trying to exploit weak points or diminish your work.
Defending means saying and doing more in the viva in addition to the thousands of hours of work that lead to your thesis.
Defending can mean exploring a topic, providing clarity, expanding on details and more.
More than anything, defending might mean saying why. Even if you’ve said it in depth in your thesis and you feel you’ve said it clearly, your examiners could want a little more from you.
Why does your work make a contribution?
PS: If you want more ideas of how you can defend your thesis and respond well to questions in the viva then take a look at The Confidence Issue, the latest instalment of Viva Survivors Select. The issue contains twenty posts from the Viva Survivors archive plus two new pages of viva help and I think it’s worth your time to take a look 🙂