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Tag: viva feelings

Nathan

The Best!

Daily Post

I meet the occasional PhD candidate who is excited. That’s a good thing and I wonder sometimes about how to encourage excitement more generally. It would be nice to go to the viva with eagerness.

But expecting your viva to be the best conversation, matching all your hopes and dreams is a sure way to find disappointment.

You don’t know exactly what your examiners will ask. If they ask something you don’t want, that will diminish how you feel. If they don’t ask something you really want then that will be disappointing too! You don’t know how long your viva will be, so hoping for either a short chat or a long and in-depth discussion is just that: a hope that your viva will go a certain way.

Hoping that your viva will be the best exam ever leaves things out of your control. Instead of hoping for the best, do your best to be prepared, to find out what you can reasonably expect, to be ready to engage with your examiners whatever they ask and however long your viva happens to be.

You can’t expect your viva to be the best thing ever. But you can work towards enjoying it as an experience – and you can reasonably expect that you will succeed.

Nathan

Serious And…

Daily Post

The viva is an exam. It’s a relatively short exam to explore years of work and the specific outputs of that work. The examiners are accomplished academics in relevant fields.

While every viva is different there are regulations and enough known experiences to inform a reasonable set of expectations for a candidate. Vivas are challenging discussions.

Three or more years of work plus many hours of deliberate preparation. Candidates might be expected to succeed but that doesn’t mean the viva is not difficult.

So the viva is serious.

And it can also be fun. It could be short. It could be rewarding. It could be exhausting! It could be an anticlimax. It could be fine. It could be disappointing. It could be fairly informal.

What do you expect from your viva? What do you hope for?

Nathan

What Do You Do?

Daily Post

What do you do if something goes wrong in your viva?

  • What do you do if you’re feeling nervous?
  • What do you do if you’re feeling unsure of what to say?
  • What do you do if you’re feeling forgetful and the right thoughts seem out of reach?
  • What do you do if you panic in your viva?

The most simple response to any of these is that you keep going. In a very real sense there isn’t anything else you can do. You’re in your viva and you’re trying to succeed. You have to keep going to do that.

 

The simple response is to keep going, but to be more specific:

  • If you’re feeling nervous you could try to pause and breathe. You could remind yourself of something helpful. You could ask for a break to compose yourself.
  • If you’re unsure then you could acknowledge that. Tell your examiners you’re not sure and why. Or start by asking yourself why you’re unsure and take a moment to think.
  • If you’re feeling forgetful then you can take a break to check something. Explain that the information has slipped your mind but you really want to talk about this.
  • If you panic then ask for a break. Find a way to calm. If you can, check what has caused that panic and see what steps you can take to address it.

You have to keep going. You have to do something. Perhaps the simplest thing to suggest is that you pause, read your thesis, drink some water, make a note and talk with your examiners.

Keep going.

Nathan

Misunderstood

Daily Post

Confusion can happen in the viva. Your examiners might not understand. They could have read a passage and got a different idea to what you meant. You could misunderstand a question, a comment or the point of a conversation.

Confusion in the viva doesn’t necessarily mean you’re wrong, your examiners are wrong or that something is wrong. It just means that there is confusion…

…but eventually confusion clears. It’s not comfortable but not harmful to your viva. It’s simply a possible part of the process.

It’s possible to actively work around confusion too. Pause to think. Check your thesis. Ask questions and in particular ask them to improve clarity. Check that your points are being understood.

Confusion isn’t comfortable but consideration and conversation clears the way to clarity.

Nathan

Revise or Review?

Daily Post

Words matter.

It might help to think of viva prep as revising for a test. If that’s how you think of it then follow that impulse. Make a plan. Consider what you need to do. Build structure to help you get the work done. Thinking of viva prep as exam revision has merit.

Another consideration could be that viva prep is reviewing things. You don’t need to revise and re-learn everything. You already know what you know. Because you’ve been doing this for years you don’t need to revise and cram your mind with information. Instead you just have to review who you are, what you can do and how far you’ve come.

Words matter.

What words are you using to describe your process for getting ready?

Nathan

Find X

Daily Post

I love maths problems that look really simple.

A simple statement that asks a question. A string of numbers looking for connection. A picture with an undefined angle or shaded area.

They can look really simple but require real thought to unpick what’s involved and then find X.

 

This isn’t very different from having concerns about the viva.

If you or someone you know feels worried we have to find the X that is worrying them. We have to unpick why X is a concern. We have to understand what that means. We can then start to think of possible options.

A maths problem typically has a single solution being looked for. Viva problems can have lots of possible solutions; they depend on the person or the situation.

In viva problems, finding X is the first step to a bigger solution. Find why the problem is a problem and you can start to find options for resolving the situation.

Nathan

Deep Down

Daily Post

Nervous. Anxious. Concerned. Worried. Afraid.

If any of these words describe how you feel about your viva then you need to ask why.

They don’t all mean the same thing. Be sure of which best describes the situation, then dig into why. Why are you worried? What’s the reason for your concern? Do you know why you’re feeling this way?

Deep down there is a reason. If you feel negative about your viva, try to unpick the cause.

It’s not wrong to feel any of these things. The viva is important and important events have a way of making us feel nervous and more. If the feeling isn’t helping you to get ready then ask why, reflect and see what the reason might be.

Do you need to know something about the process?

Are you worried about something you’ve heard about vivas and aren’t sure if it’s true or not?

Do you feel concerned about your thesis or prep?

Whatever the reason, uncovering it gives you the means to start resolving that situation. Don’t just sit with the feeling. Find something you can do to shift that feeling.

Nathan

One Hour To Go

Daily Post

With sixty minutes before your viva what are you going to do?

  • Read a few more pages a few more times?
  • Check through your notes again?
  • Knock on your supervisor’s door to ask one more question?
  • Pace  to try and release a little tension?

These are all things I did! I also went to the seminar room   too early and waited for my examiners to be exactly on time.

You can’t always control how you deal with the building expectation of something important. Maybe you can set a better intention though.

I wish I’d thought more about when I was going to arrive. I would have made a plan. I would have found ways to remind myself that I had not been idle in the weeks leading up to my viva.

Nervousness is not an unlikely possibility for viva day. What can you do to make a good final hour before your viva?

Nathan

Nervous or Anxious?

Daily Post

Some candidates feel nervous because of what they did in their thesis. Is it enough?

Some people feel nervous because of what they haven’t done. Have they missed something?

Some feel nervous because of who there examiners are. Will their experience lead to tougher questions?

Some feel nervous because they don’t know what is going to happen. What if there’s a situation they can’t cope with?

And some candidates will be nervous because the viva is important and important things make people nervous!

We can quibble as to whether some of the above is nervousness or anxiety, but either way, these things won’t disappear by themselves. If you feel nervous or anxious you have to do something.

Read your thesis, review a few papers, ask about your examiners, have a mock viva, talk to friends and colleagues and do anything rather than just sit nervous or anxious. Sitting with a negative feeling like that, whatever we call it, won’t help.

What could you do to help yourself? What will you do? Go do it.

Nathan

Hope For Excited

Daily Post

Hope is what we have when we have little leverage on the outcome.

I encourage PhD candidates to prepare for their viva rather than hope it will just all go well, because preparation leads to a better experience and a better outcome. No candidate needs to hope that they will be ready when they can act to be ready.

You might need to hope you feel excited or enthusiastic for meeting your examiners. It’s rare in my experience that candidates feel that way. I ask candidates how they feel about their viva at the start of every webinar I do and between five and ten percent say they feel excited.

At the end of a session they might say they feel better, but it’s rare that they now feel excited!

 

I know what someone can do to feel ready. I know the kinds of actions someone can take to be prepared. But I only hope that candidates feel excited. Confidence can ward against nervousness, but excitement is another thing entirely.

Maybe that’s something else I can consider in the future: how can you go from confident to excited?

Maybe if more people were excited it would be simpler to build up a positive culture around the viva.

And maybe then the viva would be something that fewer people were worried about.

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