Daily viva help for PhDs
Take some time off.
Get a little distance from your work and rest.
Viva prep is not a full time job.
You need to read your thesis, you need to rehearse for the viva, you need to reflect on your success so far and find confidence.
But first rest.
Say it with emphasis as you get nearer to the viva: “If I’ve come so far, I must be so good.”
Not perfect, not omniscient, not without nerves for such an important event.
You’ve come so far on your PhD journey, so you must be good enough to pass your viva.
If you could wave a magic wand and improve some aspect of being ready for your viva, what would you do?
All great, idealised outcomes. But there’s no magic wand. We can’t get perfection.
Instead, you could take small steps towards all of these. You can’t be perfect, but you can make things better.
No Zap! No magic. Just lots of small, positive steps to helping you get ready. What will you do?
Big, open questions in the viva like “How did you get started?” or “Can you tell us why this method is valid?” could have big, open responses. It might be necessary to talk about a lot of different things to really respond to a question, and it’s not unreasonable for a candidate to be concerned about saying everything they need to or staying on track.
What could you do in your viva to stay on point with a response? A few thoughts:
If there’s a lot to talk about it’s natural to be concerned about going off the point you want to make. Thankfully there’s lots of little things you could do to make sure that isn’t such a big concern.
Making notes helps with the viva process.
You can make a note in the viva. It could be a helpful pause in the middle of a difficult conversation. It might help you to stop and unpick a challenging question.
You can make a note (or twelve) on your thesis before the viva to help make it a better resource for the viva.
You can make a note – lots of them! – for every time you think of something that you did that has helped you grow on your PhD journey.
And you can make a note, just one, and keep it close to you through the final stages of your PhD and viva prep:
“I could not have got this far by being lucky. I must be good.”
I often describe the process of viva prep as adding lots of little things:
To get ready for the viva a candidate might also need to take a few things away too:
You need to add things to get ready for the viva. You can also help by subtracting things too.
I think there are two possibilities for most challenging question a candidate could be asked in their viva.
First, the opening question of the viva. Not knowing what that opener is until it’s asked could make it very challenging. You’ll probably respond to it well, but the anticipation might make it feel tough.
The other possibility for most challenging is whatever question you really don’t want to be asked. Whatever it is, whatever part of your thesis or research, if there’s something you really don’t want to talk about there’s likely to be significant challenges in your mind when it comes to responding.
To help prepare for the first question: remember that your examiners want your viva to go well. They want to help with that by helping you to start well. The first question is likely to be simple stated and reflective – something to get you talking about your work.
To help prepare for the question you don’t want: ask others to ask you it. Prepare. Make notes. Talk about it. Talk about why you don’t want it and invest time in talking about the thing that you don’t want. Hoping you won’t be asked is not enough. Invest time in getting better at talking about it.
You will be asked a first question; you might not be asked about the topic you really don’t want to talk about. Either way, a little prep for both will help you face the challenges of your viva.
Take time to stop and think.
Reflect on your PhD. Reflect on the journey. The peaks and troughs of hard work and difficult circumstances that have brought you this far.
Not far to go now. Reflect on what you need to do to get to the end.
And reflect on how it will feel and what you might do when your PhD journey is over – when you start a new one as a PhD, not working to be one.
Take time to reflect before your viva.
My hero Seth Godin describes anxiety as “failing in advance”.
In seminars I would estimate at least a third of candidates I ask describe themselves as nervous, anxious or worried about their chances of viva success – with anxiety being very common – even though the vast majority of vivas result in the candidate passing.
If you had anxiety about your viva, what could you do to help yourself?
A little work can help lessen or remove anxiety. A little work is also what will help you to feel ready for success at the viva.
I enjoy seeing viva success shared on Twitter. It’s fun to see people tagging posts #PhinisheD or #PhDone. I like seeing people celebrate their hard work, and others joining in to acknowledge the dedication and effort that goes into a PhD.
I smile sadly though when I see someone say that they “got lucky”. They “got past their examiners”. They scraped corrections or owe all their PhD success to things “just working out”.
There are parts of a PhD that can be attributed to good fortune – when a candidates works hard and that work pays off. But they’re not lucky. They’ve not scraped by. They’ve worked. They’ve stayed determined and developed themselves. Especially considering the times we’re living through, if you finish your PhD you’re not lucky: you earned it.
Consider the words you use to describe your success. The words you use to describe all the stages of your PhD journey have an impact. If you consider yourself simply lucky then you take something away from the talent, work and time you’ve invested – and ultimately you can take something away from the self-confidence you could build from all of that.