Daily viva help for PhDs
That was my viva. It sounds a lot, but it’s only four hours. Tick-tick-tick times 4800 and I was done!
I’ve met a handful of people with similar or longer vivas. Sometimes the viva is long, or can feel long, but often they just fly by no matter what the clock says.
And really: they don’t compare to the 20-something million seconds you’ve invested in your PhD.
Viva candidates pretty much have all the answers. That’s not because the viva is easy or the questions are predictable or because candidates can somehow prepare for every possibility. The viva’s not a quiz game.
Some questions in the viva might be trivial in the sense that they are easy for you to answer. The fact that something seems easy to you doesn’t diminish it in any way.
The viva generally is non-trivial. It’s not a game. Any ease you might feel with questions is down to your hard-earned talent.
People sometimes think of The Hobbit as just the prologue to The Lord Of The Rings.
The story of The Hobbit is barely a footnote in the first Lord Of The Rings movie. They take a few seconds to say “Bilbo found a magic ring” – but there’s so much more to it than that! Dwarves and trolls and fantastic expeditions, elves and a dragon and incredible heroism…
The Hobbit is an epic adventure. It’s not only so Bilbo can find the One Ring.
…we now cut from Nathan’s Book & Movie Review Corner, back to the Viva Survivors blog…
I think candidates sometimes forget that the time spent doing the PhD is not just the prologue. And your thesis is for more than passing the viva. It isn’t just there to please your examiners and pass an exam. It stands as a separate, lasting contribution. It means something.
The ways you change, the things you learn, the things you can do by the end – it’s epic, not just the prologue.
I love The Hobbit, but The Lord Of The Rings is the grander story. Your life after the PhD probably will be too.
The PhD is long. The viva is short.
The many years you spend researching and writing prepare you for the few hours of thinking and talking.
There’s a rule of thumb for the viva some examiners have mentioned to me:
“The first question will be easy; the last question might not be.”
There’s no trick to the first part of the statement. Examiners want the viva to go as well as it can. The first question is likely to be something you’ve thought about or could realistically expect (like how you got interested in your topic). The intention is to help get past the awkwardness and nerves of being there and get down to business.
There’s no trick to the second part either. You might get tricky questions in the viva. You might face criticisms of your work. You might find the discussion leads to a tough debate. Given the nature of what you’ve done and what the viva is for, it’s reasonable to expect the odd difficult question, particularly near the end.
It’s unreasonable to think that every question will be hard though. Expect the viva will start well. Expect your examiners will ask tough but fair questions of a talented person.
(that’s you)
Is that what you think about the viva?
If you do, I get why you would be stressed.
The viva is another step along the journey, another milestone to saunter on past to the finish line.
It’s not the end, and it’s not independent of everything else you’ve done.
In Jenga, whatever your intentions, you might knock the tower down at any moment. Your actions or a misplacement by the last player might make things so unstable that the tower can only fall.
It’s tempting to think of the viva is a precarious situation, but your thesis is not a Jenga tower, and the viva is not a game.
Questions from examiners aren’t like pulling bricks out. Your answers aren’t going to make your work fall apart. Discussion can bring in some wobbles, but your work is more than a tower of bricks. You designed this structure, it didn’t just come together out of a box.
A year or so after my PhD, when I was starting out as a freelancer, I came across a book called Gamestorming. It’s a collection of tools for use with groups of people. If you need to generate ideas, coordinate a team, break problems down or just get to know people it has lots of different suggestions. It was perfect for someone learning how to facilitate people.
One of my favourite things in the book is a model called the 7Ps Framework. I’ve used it for most of the last decade to help get my head in order when I design workshops. The 7Ps are seven words to help frame any kind of meeting.
Today, it strikes me that the 7Ps could help us get clear about the viva.
There are lots of aspects to the viva. It’s easy to focus on one and forget another. A clean perspective is out there though: just take your time and look at it from a step back.
But what if my examiner says something I’ve done is rubbish?
Imagine you’re in that position. What exactly did they say? It’s unlikely that they just used the word rubbish, but that’s what your brain has just made of their statement or question or opinion. You’ve interpreted that as “rubbish”.
Don’t panic. Take a breath. Ask them why.
Sit back. Listen. Put your feelings to one side and make notes.
When you know exactly what your examiner doesn’t like you can respond. When you have all of the details you will know what you need to discuss with them.
They might have misunderstood something: that doesn’t mean that what you did is rubbish, it just means that you didn’t communicate it as well as you hoped.
They might think something is missing: that doesn’t mean that what you did is rubbish, it just means that it’s not quite as complete as you hoped.
It’s unlikely your examiners will call something in your work rubbish. It’s certain that you have not produced a perfect thesis from perfect research – which means they might have questions or comments about the imperfections. This is natural.
If they say something is rubbish or that’s what you hear, you still get to engage with them – and you should. Ask why. Listen. Think. Respond.
And keep doing it.
Your examiners are not your biggest critics; it’s likely that you have taken on that role.
Don’t panic during your prep or in the viva.
Don’t do it. De-list it as an option. It’s not on the table.
Find something that looks like a mistake in your thesis? Don’t panic. What can you do instead?
Examiner asks an odd question? Don’t panic. What can you do instead?
Examiner makes a critical comment? Don’t panic. What can you do instead?
If you weren’t allowed to panic, what would you do instead?