You Are Here

Tag: viva experiences

Nathan

Before You Forget

Daily Post

There will be congratulations after your viva, from examiners and others, telling you how well you’ve done, how great you are and starting the necessary celebrations for a wonderfully big and amazing thing!

And before the celebrations really start to happen, take five minutes to make some notes. Grab a piece of paper, divide it into four and quickly jot down some thoughts:

  • What was the viva like for you?
  • What did your examiners ask?
  • What did you enjoy?
  • What corrections stand out to you?

Five minutes, four questions and one important task to complete before you forget. Those four questions and the notes you make could be a big help to you in the weeks that follow – or to others in the years afterwards.

Take the time to write a few things before you forget.

Nathan

Short & Sweet?

Daily Post

Some vivas are less than an hour!

But you can’t realistically expect yours to be.

You can hope, but what does that do for you?

It’s much better to prepare for your viva and the discussion, rather than invest energy in hoping it will be over quickly.

 

PS: Something else that’s short and sweet is my helpful little guide, 101 Steps To A Great Viva! It’s on Kickstarter until Wednesday 31st May, raising funds to produce a print run. That goal has now been reached and I’m aiming a little higher so that all backers get a bonus resource for viva prep. You can find more details at this link.

Nathan

What You Expect

Daily Post

Every PhD candidate has expectations for their viva.

Some expect it to be long. Some believe it will be difficult. Some expect that examiners will be harsh. Other will expect that it’s all a formality. And some don’t know what to expect – or rather, they expect that there’s nothing to expect in particular!

But some candidates expect that it will be challenging but fair. They expect examiners to be thorough but reasonable. They have an expectation for how long it will be and what the tone will be like, but know that they won’t know exactly what it will be like until they’re actually there in the viva.

So what do you expect? And how do you know your expectations are reasonable?

Every viva is unique, but that doesn’t mean your viva has to be a total unknown before you go to it.

Nathan

The Whispers

Daily Post

There are lots of whispers, rumours and half-truths about the viva.

…I know someone whose viva was almost a whole day…

…I’ve heard the internal barely says anything…

…why do we have to have them, what’s the point, most people pass anyway…

…don’t get corrections, they’re the worst, try to avoid them…

…you just have to hope it all goes well…

Make sure when you ask your friends for advice that you look for views not wholly skewed by worry, apocryphal stories and negativity.

Start with a solid foundation that isn’t built on whispers.

Nathan

“It Just Was”

Daily Post

Why was your viva so long?

I’ve been asked many times before about why my viva was four hours long, but the question surprised me at a recent webinar. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it had been some time since the last asking, or maybe I had something else on my mind that day. But I was prompted to a little bit of reflection.

Now, I’m not my examiners and I don’t have their perspective why my viva was four hours. I can only share what occurs to me and what I think. To begin with, I had a thesis describing six projects; they were all in the same area but about different ideas. That meant that we had to keep going back to square one with explanations as we talked about the thesis.

I also had some issues with presentation. While my examiners accepted my contribution, they were less happy with how the thesis was structured. Information didn’t flow in some places. In others it just didn’t meet their discipline expectations. We had to talk about that and about the corrections that would follow.

Just over halfway through my total viva time we had a break of about ten minutes, but I didn’t really notice that the time had passed. And at the time I didn’t have any awareness of typical viva lengths, what vivas were like and so on. I don’t really know why my viva was that long. It just was.

 

When someone asks about my experience, I think they’re really asking, “Why might my viva be four hours long?” – and that’s a much bigger question.

It could be that you have lots of projects – or just lots to talk about. It could be that there are issues like I had, with presentation or structure or clarity. It could be that your examiners need to unpick something to fully understand it.

Or it could be that everyone in the room is just really engaged by the discussion and they want to keep talking.

Four hour vivas are rare, all things considered. Don’t expect yours to be, but if it happens to be that long it’s not necessarily for any bad reason at all.

Nathan

Hole In One

Daily Post

You might have a viva that’s finished in an hour or less, but it’s not very likely. You can hope, but that’s about all you can do.

Instead of hoping you get some rare occurrence, why not focus your energy on something that could help you more in your viva?

Read your thesis. Write summaries. Rehearse for the discussion. Do the work to be ready for what happens, rather than hoping you get a rare, short viva.

Nathan

Patchwork

Daily Post

Every viva is different because every thesis and candidate are unique. Your thesis and experiences will to some extent ensure that your viva is different from every other viva before or after yours.

Every viva follows patterns because of university regulations, general expectations and departmental norms. There’s a patchwork of rules and ideas for what a viva is supposed to be like that gives every viva some structure. Taken together, each of these elements tells a candidate roughly what to expect: how long it might be, what kind of questions could come up and what the experience might feel like.

The more you stick pieces together, the better informed you can be and the more ready you can make yourself – while understanding that you won’t really know what will happen until you get there. The patchwork of regulations, expectations and norms helps you be ready for whatever happens.

Nathan

Snapshots

Daily Post

Remember that if you ask someone about their viva you are going to get a picture of what happened, and not the event itself. Not all of the details will be clear and perhaps some of the things you really want to know will not be present in their story.

It’s like looking at someone else’s holiday photos. Holiday snapshots show things someone else noticed or were interested in. At first, talking about it might only give surface impressions, the short version of what happened.

Every viva story is a snapshot of an experience. A viva story doesn’t reveal everything and without context could even be confusing.  Ask about what you need to know. And ask the right people! It makes more sense to ask a few people from your own department about their viva than trawl the internet for lots of stories.

Figure out what you need to know to have more certainty for your viva and your preparations.

Nathan

Average Viva Lengths

Daily Post

I once took survey responses from over 300 PhD graduates about their viva experiences. There was a lot of data and a lot of clusters within the data. Without being careful it would have been easy to share wrong ideas about what was “average” or “normal”.

What might average mean? If we added up all of the viva lengths and divided them by the number of people it came to around 2 hours and 20 minutes.

Was that average though? Was that normal? What could I share that was useful?

 

In the end, thinking more on the data and on what people asked me I came to share a few key points about the average viva length:

  • Every viva is unique, so knowing an “average” doesn’t help by itself.
  • Sharing a breakdown of percentages doesn’t help either, it’s too much!
  • Expectations are useful to help in preparation: so an expected length has to be useful.

Which leads me to say: expect your viva to be at least two hours, because around 50% of vivas are two hours or longer. Yours could be less, but if you expect it to be longer then you can prepare to engage for a long period of time. You can prepare to take your time – and if it’s shorter then at least you’ll be well-prepared, rather than simply hoping it is over quickly!

And perhaps we should dismiss the notion of “average” vivas completely. There are real expectations we can explore for the viva, but they cover ranges of experiences rather than simple numbers.

Nathan

Morning or Afternoon

Daily Post

A morning viva starts sooner, but an afternoon viva might finish more quickly.

An afternoon viva could be more nervous for a candidate because they have more hours to think before it starts.

But are there distinct advantages or disadvantages to the start time? Not really.

Your situation or your examiners’ circumstances might favour a particular time; anyone involved might have a preference. But the start time doesn’t make a great deal of difference.

When you know the date and time of your viva, figure out what you need to do well in the hours leading up to the start. Morning or afternoon, you have to manage yourself as you make your final preparations.

1 … 6 7 8 9 10 … 27