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Nathan

Prep Progress

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Keep a tally of your viva prep. Every day you do something to help your preparations, big or small, make a mark. One mark per day, not one mark per task. Watch as the number of marks build over time.

If you’re pre-submission this could be a task as simple as downloading regulations or as big as finishing your thesis. After submission this could be marking when you write a few notes or have a mock viva.

Just one mark per day. Every time you add a mark you’re showing your commitment.

It’s a simple little message that you’re sending to someone: you, days or weeks from now on the morning of your viva.

Whatever else you feel, whatever else is happening, when you look at your tally you can see clearly that you’ve done the work.

Nathan

Fortunately

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No PhD candidate gets to their viva or passes because they are lucky.

When we reduce the situation to the simplest terms, a PhD candidate submits their thesis and succeeds in the viva because they work hard and enough of that hard work pays off.

PhD success is not a lottery. You have to work hard. When you do enough, fortunately you find what you need.

Nathan

Mini-Viva Modifiers

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In a few months it will be five years since I first published 7776 Mini-Vivas – a little game to play and get practice for the kinds of discussion you might face in the viva. I’m going to do something special to mark five years since I made it, but I don’t know what yet!

Since making 7776 Mini-Vivas I’ve made a small printed version, adapted it in several ways and occasionally shared other posts here with particular question sets. You can use it as a reflection tool, as conversation practice and as a means to rehearse key questions or ideas.

Take a look at 7776 Mini-Vivas if you haven’t already; explore the resource and think about how you could use it to get ready for your viva. I’ve been thinking about ideas for variants on the concept a lot lately. If you’re looking for more fun ways to use it, here are six:

  1. Reverse: roll dice but then start with the last question and work backwards.
  2. Extra: for a longer mini-viva, get a second person to ask another question from each set.
  3. Keywords: take twenty seconds before responding to write down keywords to help your response.
  4. Five Minutes: take a question from each set and use them as the backbone for a five minute presentation.
  5. All The Ones: take a single sheet of paper and use question 1 from each set to write a summary of your research.
  6. And All The Sixes: take a sheet of paper and use question 6 from each set to reflect on the more challenging aspects of your PhD.

How else could you use the idea of having a mini-viva or two to help you get ready?

Nathan

You Get To Have A Viva

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It’s worth remembering, when you’ve submitted and you’re working towards your viva day, that it might not have gone this way. Despite the associated nerves and negativity that people attach to the viva, having one is not guaranteed.

You might have decided to stop pursuing a PhD. Circumstances, particularly during the last three years or so, might have made continuing with research impossible. Things might not have worked out with your supervisor, financial pressures could have been too great or your research ideas might have not developed.

But instead you did the work. You solved problems and overcame challenges. Things worked out enough. You submitted your thesis and now it’s not the case that you have to have a viva – you get to have a viva.

It’s work. It’s a challenge. It matters so it might make you nervous. But it’s a really good thing.

You get to have a viva. Remember that.

Nathan

The Right Stuff

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For your viva you need the right people in the right place at the right time.

What makes your examiners right for you could make them wrong for anybody else. You may have the opportunity to suggest names, but however they are selected they will have the right characteristics to be good examiners for you.

Only the right amount of progress can make a candidate right for writing up and their thesis right for submission. Your thesis doesn’t have to be perfect: in fact, in order to be right there probably has to be a lot of material left out.

Right? Does this all make sense? A lot of things need to be a certain way in order to create viva success: not perfect, just “right”. Fit for the purpose. Meeting the standard.

Good enough.

More than anything, these two words can emphasise that you’re doing the right thing when you go to your viva. You’ve worked enough, learned enough, done enough and are good enough.

Right?

Nathan

Time Zones

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I’m still enjoying my summer break from webinar delivery, but looking forward to starting again in the coming weeks.

One thing I always do now is see if everyone that I’m talking to is in the UK. There have been several times in the last few years when I’ve mentioned finishing for lunch that someone would say, “Actually, it’s almost bedtime for me…”

And just a few months ago someone shared that it was really early in the morning for them as they were in Alaska!

It helps to appreciate that others you’re working with might be in different time zones. There’s a conversion: you’re five hours ahead or three hours behind. There’s a difference between how you might feel at that time compared to someone else.

 

All of this makes me think of the different time zones of a PhD journey. At different stages you could feel very differently about your research, your progress and yourself.

Today, right now, you could be two years ahead of your first year. Whatever you felt then, whatever challenges you face, now you know more. Now you’ve done more.

Or maybe you’re three months away from your viva. You have viva prep ahead but the you-in-three-months will be ready. They may feel nervous but they can be confident too.

A day will come when you’re separated by hours from someone –  you again! – who has succeeded in their viva. You have nerves and wondering in those last hours, while they have smiles and tiredness!

 

Look back to reflect on your journey. Look ahead to see what you could still do to help yourself.

Whatever time it is, when you think about it, there’s always an opportunity for you to do something to help your viva preparation.

Nathan

No Understatement

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Before your viva, reflect on the best of your work, your results and your thesis.

How can you communicate the value of what you’ve done?

What are the words that will share how good your thesis is?

Write summaries, capture keywords and rehearse talking about your work. Don’t leave it to the viva and don’t be too humble.Don’t bluster or over-exaggerate the outcomes of your work, but also don’t focus on the might-have-beens and if-onlys of the pandemic.

If you need to talk about the impact of problems and obstacles then do so, but leave no room for doubt that your work is valuable and that you are capable.

Nathan

What Do You Need?

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Not want, need.

What do you need for your viva?

  • Do you need certain people or kinds of people to be your examiners?
  • Do you need particular support from your supervisors or others?
  • Do you need confidence or a better memory?
  • Do you need to feel a certain way for your viva?

What do you need?

When you figure out a list of your needs you can start to figure out how you can meet those needs – or meet them as much as possible.

What do you need? Then what can you do?

Nathan

Getting Ready & Being Ready

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The process and the goal.

Getting ready means reading your thesis, asking questions, checking things, making notes and building confidence. Being ready means feeling certain that your viva will be successful.

Before you sit down to get ready, think ahead to what you want to feel when you are ready. What does being ready mean for you? What would you have done? What would convince you that you’re ready for your viva?

When you have a sense of what it would mean for you to be ready for your viva, you can plan and do your preparations much more easily.

Nathan

Figure It Out

Daily Post

Questions and comments in the viva are supposed to be fair, but they could also be tough.

You might forget something. You might not know something. You might disagree with your examiners. You might be surprised. You might need time to reflect and think.

All of these are understandable, but faced with a tough question or comment you could default to certain behaviours:

  • Freeze. You stop and go blank, panic gripping you.
  • Flee. You try to bluff and evade, get away from the point and onto firmer ground.
  • Fight. You could be over-assertive from a place of worry.

These are the classic responses to troubling situations. They won’t serve you well in the viva. They won’t help you to engage with a tough question and could only make things worse for you and the discussion. However, you could always:

  • Figure it out. You can take a moment, breathe, pause, think, sip some water and calmly respond.

You can’t choose the questions you’ll be asked in your viva – but you can decide in advance how you would like to engage with your examiners.

You don’t have to freeze at, flee from or fight with tough questions.

Take a moment to figure it out instead.

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