Daily viva help for PhDs
You can ask for a break in the viva.
You can let your examiners know that you need one for a medical or health-related reason.
You can ask for one because your viva is becoming long.
You can ask for one if you’re on campus or over video.
You can ask for one if you’ve had one already.
You can ask for one before the end of the first hour.
If you need one, at any time, ask for a break in your viva.
Make a plan for submission. Set milestones to help keep you on track. Check the details for the official things you need to do. Maybe ask a friend to go with you if you have to submit paper copies and make an event of the occasion.
Make a plan for your prep. It doesn’t take a lot to get ready; if you’re already busy it helps to map out what you will do and when you will do it. Ask for help in advance so you can arrange specific times. Start soon enough so you don’t have to rush to finish.
Make a plan for the viva. Think about how you would like it to go, how you would like to present yourself, what you will need for the day. Plan your outfit and supplies. Plan your space if your viva is over video. Decide on how you will try to engage with questions. Check the details but remember that you can’t control everything: you can plan to do your best.
Make a plan for the short break at the end of the viva. Find something to do in that brief period of waiting to occupy yourself.
Finally, make a plan to celebrate your success!
Your examiners are not attending a play. They don’t want you to sit (or stand) and talk at them for hours. They want a conversation. They want you to respond rather than recite.
There might be tricky parts of your research or thesis where it matters if the words are said a certain way. Of course, check that you remember them correctly – but don’t expect to simply parrot them to your examiners.
It’s far better to have general rehearsal for responding to questions (with a mock viva or having a chat with friends) than it is to write down and try to memorise lots of possible responses to lots of possible questions.
You need to talk in the viva. You need to prepare to do that. You don’t need to have prepared responses or monologues.
In the viva, no candidate wants to say the wrong thing. No-one wants to misremember a detail or misquote a paper. No-one wants to go blank and say the first thing, the silly thing, the wrong thing.
No-one wants to say the wrong thing, but remember there might not be a right thing.
Not every question has an answer. Not every question is probing for truth. A question could be exploratory. A question could be to clarify a point. A question could be seeking an opinion if there is one.
In the viva you could definitely say the wrong thing; depending on the question you might not be able to offer a right thing. You can always take your time and offer your best. Listen to the question, pause, think and respond.
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.
You’re not the first person to have a viva.
You’re not the first person to feel nervous, anxious, worried or afraid. You’re not the first person to worry that you could or should have done more. You’re not the first PhD candidate to feel you needed more things to go right. You’re not the first candidate to have vague worries or specific concerns about the viva.
You’re also not the first candidate to pass with all of these being true.
You’re not the first person to feel this way but that doesn’t make it any less real or hard. Thankfully it means there are others who will know what it is like to be in your position and be able to help you.
You won’t be the last person to have a viva either – which means that you’ll be able to help others as they get ready to meet their examiners.
Get help now as you need it. Give help later when you can.
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 simplest way to describe your role in the viva is that you are there to engage with your examiners’ questions. Whatever the question is – easy, hard, expected, unknown, hoped-for or unwanted – engage with it. There’s space for you to ask your own, of course, but for the most part you play your part by responding to questions and being a full participant in the discussion.
Whatever they ask, think and respond. There’s useful prep that can help but keeping that thought in mind once you get to the viva can do a lot to prepare you.
You have one job. Engage and respond, whatever they ask.
You can’t know exactly what will happen at your viva before you have it.
But you can know about the many vivas of your friends and colleagues. Use stories of vivas in the past to help get ready for yours in the future.
From these stories you can see that vivas range in length. They’re fairly structured conversations. You can expect challenging questions. You can also know who your examiners are and what they do. You can’t know what questions they will ask, but you can get a sense of what they might want.
Altogether you can have a good idea of what your viva will be like. You can build up a realistic set of expectations rather than worry about the unknown aspects.
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.