Daily viva help for PhDs
If you were accepted on to a PhD programme…
…and if you did the work over a long period of time, overcoming difficulties along the way…
…and if you made a significant, original contribution…
…and if you kept going even through 2020, despite change and pressures…
…and if you’ve written your thesis as best you can…
…and if you’ve taken a little time to get ready for your viva, continuing to show your commitment…
…then…
Well, then why wouldn’t your viva go well for you?
PhD candidates often want to know about the “average” viva:
This is to be expected and a good set of expectations is really helpful for a candidate. There are plenty of questions about the average viva, but perhaps it’s even more useful to focus on questions for the amazing viva?
And, most importantly, what will you do to show up with as much confidence as you can find for this amazing event?
Expectations help, but so does preparation that raises you way above the average.
“Have fun!” is a better encouragement for the viva than “good luck” or “don’t worry”.
What if instead of wondering if your viva would go well, you just assumed that it was going to be enjoyable? Maybe then instead of asking yourself endless worried what if questions, you could ask:
Plenty of candidates enjoy their viva. Why not you?
The years of your PhD programme are enough time to do your research and develop yourself.
Several weeks of small tasks is enough preparation time to get yourself ready for your viva.
A matter of hours will be enough time to convince your examiners that you’ve done something significant and that you’re a capable researcher.
And while your PhD journey and thesis are impressive, after you’re done, you have enough time to go do something even more impressive!
So what will you do?
You need to hear a few stories before a full picture of the viva comes into focus.
One bad story could convince you (wrongly) that you’re in for a bad time.
One good story wouldn’t explain enough of what to generally expect.
Listen to the stories of PhD graduates generally to get an overall sense of what happens. Ask two or three friends from your department about their vivas to begin to get a sense of the process, expectations and experiences that candidates have in the viva. Vivas are generally fine. They can be challenging but not negative, difficult but not something that needs to be endured.
A sample of one isn’t enough, but a few stories can help you feel good for the challenge ahead.
It makes a difference that you’re not in the same room as your examiners if you’re over Zoom. Delays due to a poor signal, tech failure or less body language to read could all make it harder to engage with your examiners. These factors might even create a sense that there’s something wrong with the viva.
You can make a positive difference too though. You can practise with friends or in a mock viva to get a feel for delays in communication and grow comfortable with the video format. You can explore options to help your tech situation. You can read your examiners’ work to help you connect with them. You can prepare for your viva to be as confident and ready as you can be for the situation. You can do a lot to build yourself up.
Don’t forget that whatever might interfere – tech, signal, the size of the screen on which you see your examiners – everyone involved wants the viva to go well. The online element shouldn’t interfere with any good will when it comes to connecting with your examiners, or interfere with the outcome of your viva.
Two years ago I shared this little post about things I didn’t know about the viva. Two years on and I have thoughts about some of these!
I’m still wondering about thesis-by-publication differences, and the vivas of full-time and part-time researchers.
I also realise that I don’t know for sure how common a presentation is at the start of the viva (they seem to be quite rare). It’s unclear whether or not the switch to Zoom vivas is going to be remain common in the long term. I don’t know if there is a universal viva prep help idea that can make a difference for every candidate (though I keep working on it!).
I’ve accepted that there will always be things I don’t know about the viva. Some I can find out, some I can explore and make sense of, and some things might always remain unknown. I can keep exploring a little but I also have to focus on what I do know, what I can share and how I can help.
Consider your research. There are things you don’t know. You can explore that a little, to be sure of what you don’t know and why – but keep your focus squarely on what you do know, how you can be certain, and how you can best share it with others.
There’s always more. But by now you must know enough.
There’s a fairytale aspect to the viva.
Generally there’s a rhythm and sense of how one will unfold. More often than not, a clear sense of beginning, middle and end, patterns by which the story comes together.
Only a few important people in the story, a clear protagonist, a series of challenges – though thankfully no goblins, ogres, giants or trolls.
And like fairytales, when you ask around you discover that nearly every viva has a happy ending.
If you feel nervous before your viva there is typically a simple explanation: you’re recognising that the viva is important.
You need to pass, you’ve invested a lot of work to this point, and even though the vast majority of candidates pass, there’s still that little quiet voice saying, “Come on, you’ve got to do this!”
You will. It’s important, so you feel nervous. You can choose what you put your attention on. Let your actions focus on doing the viva well, rather than on beating away your nerves.
The viva process could perhaps best be described as non-obvious.
It’s not obvious what the process is like because viva experiences haven’t traditionally been shared all that much. It’s not obvious what to expect because regulations only tell one aspect of what goes on. Your examiners’ questions won’t all be obvious; it’s not possible to second-guess what they might latch on to or want to dig into. And there’s no way to find out everything that will get rid of the sense of not knowing what to expect.
But if you want to get rid of uncertainty you don’t need to find out everything. Read the regulations to get the big picture, and ask a few friends for their experiences to fill in the details. Learn about general viva questions and formats, and find out about your examiners’ research and interests to explore where their particular questions might come from.
Explore a little and you’ll see that a lot of what was odd or unknown about the viva is obvious with hindsight.