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Tag: viva prep

Nathan

Reviewing Literature

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Your examiners are interested in your research, your thesis and you as the researcher who did it all. Bound up in all of that is your familiarity with the literature of your discipline. You don’t need to have read every paper before you got started. You don’t need to remember every detail of every paper or book you’ve read over the years of your PhD journey.

Your examiners expect familiarity. They expect a certain general understanding. And they expect a particular understanding of the works you’ve used and cited.

They don’t expect perfection though! Talk with your supervisors and your colleagues to get a sense of what might be expected.

Beyond that focus on the literature that has made a big difference. If you could recommend ten papers for someone to read to understand your topic what would they be? What paper was most influential for you and why?

 

PS: I explore more of what to expect from examiners and the end of the PhD in the latest issue of Viva Survivors Select. The Survival Issue contains twenty posts from the archive plus new writing on surviving the viva, working through the PhD journey and being ready for the challenges of the viva.

Nathan

Where Is Your Focus?

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Where are you giving your attention when you plan your viva prep?

You don’t have to do everything all at once. You don’t have to do what everyone else does.

It might be a good idea to summarise the content of each chapter in your thesis – but equally you could focus on the contribution of your thesis as a whole. Either way could work well to get you reviewing and reflecting.

Having a mock viva is a good general preparation idea – but it might be even more helpful for you to explore different ways of explaining key parts of your research to friends or in a presentation.

Be mindful of your focus as you get ready. Are you doing what you need to do to get ready?

Nathan

List Ten Problems

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Here’s a little viva prep exercise to unpack problems you faced on your PhD journey.

Start by listing up to ten problems that you faced. These could be access to literature or resources, time challenges, supervisory issues, personal circumstances, a particularly difficult research issue or something else.

Once you have up to ten on your list take a minute or two to rank them according to severity, starting with the one which had least impact and then working your way to the most severe.

For each one write a few notes to respond to the following questions:

  • Why was it a problem?
  • How did you overcome it?
  • What was the specific impact on your PhD?

Reflecting and writing you will build up ideas for how you could talk about this with your examiners if the topic comes up at your viva. You might make connections between problems and see there was a deeper issue you addressed.

However big the problems were you will also see that you were able to rise to meet them: you overcame a lot to get this far and that means something, both for your research and for you.

Nathan

Watching Out

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You can’t eliminate every potential stressor or difficult question ahead of your viva but through preparation you can be aware of them.

Read your thesis and reflect on your research. What was stressful? What was difficult in a negative way? Was there anything over the course of those years that made doing the work difficult?

Ahead of your viva you can prepare for engaging with those topics if they come up at the viva. You don’t have to say everything but you might have to say something that you’re uncomfortable talking about.

Writing some notes beforehand, talking with your supervisor or a trusted friend or even using the mock viva as a way to prepare can all be useful steps to getting ready if there’s a sensitive topic.

You can’t remove difficult topics from the viva conversation. You can be aware, you can watch out and prepare to engage well.

Nathan

Change For Your Prep

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There might be a certain logic to do some of your viva prep in a different space to where you would typically work.

A different space allows you to think away from your typical environment. Maybe working at a different time could give you a new insight into how you work or what you’ve done well. Working in a different way (writing longhand rather than typing) might change the pace of your observations or the way you think about things.

Viva prep could be a really good time for changing things up as you get ready for your viva.

Nathan

Two Step Viva Prep

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Step One: Make lists.

Step Two: Do the work.

Viva prep involves a fair amount of work, reflection, planning and time – but you don’t need to make it complicated.

 

PS: one more helpful viva prep step would be to subscribe to the Viva Survivors blog and get a new helpful post emailed to you every day!

Nathan

Two Months Left

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Use the next two months as an opportunity to finish the year in a good place for your viva.

Every day for the rest of the year take two minutes to do one of the following:

  • Write down a work-related achievement from that day;
  • Write down one thing in your thesis you are proud of;
  • Write down one thing from your research that didn’t exist before your PhD;
  • Write down one thing that moves you closer to being ready for your viva.

If you do this for the next sixty days – let’s say you take Christmas Day off! – then you’ll have sixty small pieces of confidence for your viva. Sixty small thoughts that will help you start 2026 in a good place for whatever challenges await you.

Two minutes per day, one thought written down per day. What will you do?

Nathan

Unpacking & Reframing

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Summaries are a helpful viva prep tool.

A good summary could help you to unpack ideas. You can take out, examine and remind yourself of what something is, why it helps and what it’s for.

A good summary could allow you to reframe your work. You can find a new perspective by taking a particular focus or by examining a specific aspect of what you’ve done.

Summaries allow you to think ahead. The information can be the foundations of responses in the viva. You wouldn’t be expected to read from summaries in the viva but they can help you to rehearse what points really matter.

Unpack your ideas. Reframe your thinking. Use summary creation as a useful part of your viva prep toolkit.

Nathan

Building A Bridge

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Public domain image of a small wooden bridge that crosses a stream between two close banks.

Viva prep is like building a bridge between where you are when you submit your thesis and where you need to be for your viva.

But the gap is not that wide. The bridge does not have to be that complicated.

Why take the chance that you might stumble when preparation is not much work compared to all the work you’ve done before?

 

PS: Viva prep is one of the big topics of my Viva Survivor webinar which is running on Wednesday 3rd December 2025. I’ve shared this session more than 400 times and it is my comprehensive live session on getting ready for the viva. Check the link for full details of what to expect from the webinar!

Nathan

Not For Them

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Who is your thesis for?

It’s unlikely that you have written your thesis with only your examiners in mind. Whatever your topic, structure or conclusions, your thesis isn’t for your examiners. You’ll have another general audience in mind but your examiners have to read it, digest it and plan to ask you about it at your viva.

It’s not for them – but you have to think a lot once it is written and ready about how you will talk to them about it at your viva.

To do that it helps to know who your examiners are. Do a little research into them and their publications if you need to. It also helps to know what they might be interested in. Remind yourself of the regulations and purpose of the viva.

Prepare to talk to your examiners about your thesis but remember who it is really for.

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