Daily viva help for PhDs
The viva is nearly-but-not-quite the end of the PhD journey.
It really won’t take much to get ready for it.
You’ll get to have a conversation with two interested academics about your research.
Once your viva is finished and your corrections are complete you can start the next phase of your life or career as Doctor Somebody.
What other reasons can you find to help you look forward to your viva?
If you have doubts that you’ve done enough, that your thesis is good enough or that you are good enough then take a little time to reflect on what you’ve done.
For questions like these you won’t always have an exact number. You can know the scale of your past efforts and determination.
You can know that you’ve come this far because you did the work. You can know that whatever mistakes you’ve made along the way that you have done enough. You can know that whatever doubts you have that you are good.
The practical tasks involved in viva prep are not hard, but shifting focus to do the work can be tough.
Why? Perhaps because you’ve done it all before. You did this work! Haven’t you done enough already? You did the research, you wrote the thesis, you checked it and now you have to read it again and do more work for the viva. Really?!
Or maybe your response is lead by nervousness. Maybe you have lots of questions in the way. What exactly will be involved in the viva? What do examiners do? How do they behave? If viva prep is another step closer then putting it off means you might not have to inspect your own nervousness yet, at least for a little while.
Or you could be busy. Steering your attention to prep when you have a job, or you’re looking for one, or when you have responsibilities is just a hard ask. You know it needs doing, but finding the time or feeling energised enough when you need to prepare can be tough.
Whatever it is, whatever is proving a barrier, you need to find a way around it. Whatever the problem is you still need to prepare. You need to get ready for your viva.
It’s not as simple as saying just get ready. Whatever is in the way of you shifting your focus to preparation is real. You have to find a way forward though. Everyone is different, so every solution is going to be unique.
Generally you have to make a plan that works for you, that is driven by what time you have, how you feel and what gaps you see in your preparation. Recognise the barrier and figure out a way around it.
And then you have to do to the work.
You need to get ready for your viva.
We can look at all of the numbers for the viva – pass rates, lengths, percentages of candidates told they’ve passed at the start, correlation of questions and disciplines – and see lots of little details about the general expectations.
We can listen to the stories of candidates – what they did, what happened, how they felt and what that meant for them – and we’ll build a real sense of the viva experience.
The numbers help but certainty of what to expect and what to do is only going to be found by asking people about their experiences. Ask the right people the right questions and you’ll know what you need to do and what you can expect for your viva.
Statistics about the viva help, but stories about the viva help more.
People use lots of names to describe the PhD viva.
Viva voce. Thesis defence. Final viva. Thesis examination. The viva.
It’s quite common, in my experience, for candidates to capitalise the V in viva!
“…my Viva is next month…”
Words matter. The name we give something influences how we think and feel about it. In turn this influences what we do about it. The viva is important – your viva is important – but it’s just one day. One day after over a thousand spent on your PhD journey.
If you find that preparing for your thesis defence is giving you doubts, then consider that you’re getting ready for a thesis examination.
If you stress over your Viva then perhaps you will feel better about your viva.
What’s in a name? There are so many ways to describe the conversation you’ll have with your examiners at the end of your PhD. What name will be right for your viva? Make a good choice for yourself.
The viva is a challenge because you don’t know what will happen.
It’s a challenge because you don’t know what your examiners think.
It’s a challenge despite the vast majority of candidates passing.
It’s a challenge because the outcome matters.
It’s a challenge even though you have the right skillset and knowledge base to succeed.
It’s a challenge even knowing that it all springs from your work and research.
Perhaps the best thing you can do is simply accept the challenge. Remember that you have done well and done enough in the past. Believe that you can succeed again.
I’ve said those four words probably hundreds of times since the start of the pandemic and my shift to working from home.
For any webinar that I deliver I have to produce joining instructions way in advance. Then I check my slides and notes the day before (and on the day) to see what needs updating. I draft follow-up emails beforehand, do a quick run-through of key points, check all of the tech is working well and make sure I have my water bottle filled. I check I have my notes, I check if my wife is going to be home while I’m delivering the session. Then I get things going and finally I ask,
“Can you hear me?”
There’s a lot of really practical steps to delivering one of my sessions.
And I also write out an overview each time even though my notes are onscreen for me to see. I write out a five-point list of things to remember and focus me that is the same for every session. I listen to a short playlist of music that gives me energy and helps me to feel confident. I have a picture on my desk that my daughter made for me, and a small paperweight that is comforting to hold at times while I talk to everyone through the camera.
There’s a lot of really personal steps to delivering one of my sessions.
The practical steps are necessary because I couldn’t do the work at all without them. The personal steps are necessary because I wouldn’t feel like me and I couldn’t do the work as well without them.
Over the course of a PhD, a postgraduate researcher has to do the work. They have to do the research and practical steps that lead them to completion. But to feel right they also have to pay attention to the personal work that can help them feel confident about their ability.
For your viva, you have to have done the practical steps for your research and the personal steps for you and your confidence, just like I do for delivering a webinar.
Does that make sense? Can you hear me?
Is the viva unfair?
It might help if you knew what your examiners thought about your thesis before the viva.
You could benefit by knowing what questions would be asked, or how long it was going to take.
You might feel there are certain things you would want to control about the situation.
Or perhaps you really wish that during your research more stuff had happened the way it was supposed to.
Even taking all of that into account the viva is pretty fair.
You get several years to do the work and one opportunity to have a conversation with your examiners. The process isn’t hidden. There are regulations for your institution and expectations more generally: if you don’t know, you can find out. There are kinds of work that help someone get ready, and they’re not too onerous: if you don’t know, you can find out and then get ready. If you need more support for any reason then it will be there. The viva is a challenge. It could be difficult – in a way it’s supposed to be.
But it’s also fair.
My work – the sessions I run, the things I write and do – is focussed on the final year viva. The last big milestone of the PhD journey. But earlier in a postgraduate researcher’s story there might be another viva.
It’s sometimes called a first-year viva, a transfer review or some other set of words that means we’re checking in that you’re on track now that you’ve been doing this for a while.
I don’t know a lot about them.
A lot of what motivates the final viva is comparable to the first-year viva. My knowledge is limited though and I can’t offer the same certainties: I don’t know about expectations for lengths or questions. I can make educated guesses; the best people to talk to are the people you know already. Your supervisors and your friends who have been through the process. Local knowledge is going to beat anything that the person on the internet can say.
A participant at a webinar last year asked me, “What do I do about my final viva if I had a bad experience at my first-year viva?”
It was a brave and generous question. Brave because even in a webinar it can be hard to share something like that. Generous because they were probably not the only person to have a bad experience during their PhD, at their first-year viva or otherwise, and their question allowed a space to talk about that issue.
I didn’t know a lot about that person. I knew nothing about their first-year viva. I felt confident saying this though:
“You don’t have to be defined by that one experience. That happened. But that doesn’t have to be what you take forward. That doesn’t have to be the thing you keep in mind for your final viva. It was probably hard, but you can move past that. Despite that you kept going. Focus on that instead. Your first-year viva and your final viva are two completely different events, with different people involved. And now you are a different person to who you were then. Focus on everything you’ve achieved over the course of your PhD, and not one day that didn’t go to plan. Keep going.”
Well, I said something like that! I wish I had had this set of particular words arranged just so on that day a few months ago.
I offer them here instead, in case they can help anyone else.
If your first-year viva was tough, or if you had another difficult meeting or conversation during your PhD, remember: that was then and now you’re not the same person.
You’ve done more, know more and can do more. You’ve done enough to prove yourself. Keep going and succeed in the viva.
The viva is most likely the final challenge of your PhD. Corrections are work, but in most cases they’re simply editing or amending what you’ve already finished. The viva is the big thing you need to focus on and get ready for.
So prepare. Find out what’s involved. You have a lot of skill and knowledge when you submit: you need to know how to apply that to the challenge. You need to know what the viva is all about. You need to know how you can be your best in that situation.
You’ve risen to so many challenges over the course of your PhD. You can rise to and succeed at this final one.
Take a little time to get ready. That’s all you need.