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Tag: viva prep

Nathan

Getting Ready If You’re Busy

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I had a luxury of time to prepare for my viva. I didn’t have a job or a family, so I treated my prep as a continuation of my 35-to-40 hours per week routine.

Most candidates won’t be in that position. You could have a full-time job, or a part-time job, or family obligations or 101 other things that I didn’t have to think about.

And that doesn’t need to be a problem. It just takes a little planning to make sure you don’t feel overwhelmed.

There are lots of things you could do to get ready (and there are lots of posts on this site on those sorts of topics!). Think about what will make you feel prepared. Explore how much time you might have, based on when you might submit and what your work pattern is like.

Break things down. How long would it take to read a chapter of your thesis? How long would it take to write a summary of a chapter? How could you spread it out over the weeks before your viva?

Even if you don’t have specific dates and times now, you can map out roughly how you might get it done. Keep that rough map. When your thesis is submitted you can start to make that sketch a reality.

Viva preparation doesn’t take hundreds and hundreds of hours. If you’re busy, or you’re going to be, sketch a plan today.

Nathan

New Year, Old You

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What are your resolutions? What are you changing? In particular, what efforts are you going to make to ready for your viva?

Change can be good, but it’s worth asking whether or not you need to change in the first place. Do you really need to make big changes to get ready for your viva? Do you need to give everything 110%?

Maybe you don’t need a New You.

You’ve not got this far by accident. Old You is up to the task.

Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2018: Viva Prep

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To finish 2018 I’m sharing my favourite posts from the last year. I’ll start as I did last year with the topic of viva prep, something that’s always in my mind because of this blog and the sessions that I deliver. Here are some of the most useful posts from the last twelve months.

I hope these posts give you a good foundation if you’re preparing for your viva soon. Seen anything else you think is useful for viva prep? Let me know! And do share these “best of” posts with any friends whose vivas are in the near future 🙂

Nathan

Five Sentences

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I love the provocation of five.sentenc.es: a call for shorter email and replies.

It’s sometimes tricky to explain ourselves clearly in a short space, but often rewarding when we do.

Think about what you could do in five sentences for your viva prep.

You could summarise your thesis in five sentences, or a chapter, a tricky part, or the core of your bibliography, your examiners’ work and so on.

Not everything needs to take a lot of words.

Nathan

Eat The Frog

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Last week I blogged about the Three Easy Wins idea for productivity, and shared some thoughts of what a candidate could do to get several quick pieces of viva prep done. If you were looking for something in the opposite direction, there’s also the “eat the frog” school of thought: if you knew the worst thing you had to do today was eat a frog, and you had to do it today, would you do it first thing or wait until 4pm?

Rather than put it off, you’d probably eat the frog right away – the day can only get better from there!

The productivity philosophy behind this is that a person would be most productive if they just get on with the least desirable task first. They’re then free to get on with less terrible tasks. For viva preparation perhaps this frog-like-task could be arranging a mock viva, exploring the work of examiners or sitting down to read the thesis. It could be reflecting on key questions, or re-reading tricky papers. There are lots of things that might just feel “Ugh!” – but once they’re done you can move on.

If you eat your viva prep frog, then everything else is less of a challenge!

Nathan

A Summary Of Summaries

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Summarising your thesis or some aspect of it is useful. A summary helps you in two ways. First, through the act of creation: thinking about your work and then making something from those thoughts is a valuable reflection. Second, as a result, you have a resource you can use during your preparations for the viva.

A few considerations for how you might tailor this approach:

  • Use questions to direct your summary.
  • Decide in advance how much you are going to write, i.e., how many words? How many pages?
  • Follow your preferences for level of detail: what will be most useful to you?
  • Follow your preferences for what it will look like: bullet points, sentences or pictures?
  • Reflect on what gaps you might be trying to fill.

I’m keen on summaries as a helpful viva preparation tool. Take a look at similarly themed posts via this link. Explore what will be useful for you as you prepare for your viva.

Nathan

Daily

Daily Post

My daughter has an advent calendar every year at Christmastime. Normally her aunt buys her a toy calendar: every day from the first of December to Christmas Eve she opens the little door and gets a little person or an accessory building a festive scene. Every day she builds up the scene, and also increases her excitement – and ours! – that it’s almost Christmas.

In the same way, I think a little daily viva prep is useful for most candidates to feel ready for their viva. I’m not suggesting it’s the only thing to do; some activities – like, say, sitting down for a mock viva or making a mind map – are too time-intensive or complicated to be classed as “little”. But finding something to do every day to engage with your thesis, to reflect on your research or to prepare yourself in some way is valuable.

A little daily work can really build confidence for the day. Maybe, like an advent calendar, it can also build anticipation for the event rather than apprehension.

Nathan

Three Easy Wins For Viva Prep

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I’m a fan of the “three easy wins” productivity idea: simply put, start your day by getting three little victories. Clear that email out of your inbox, write down that short paragraph or check your blog feed for new posts. Just do three simple things that don’t require a lot of work. These little efforts add to your overall sense of achievement for the day. They move you along in the right direction.

Viva prep can seem overwhelming to some: it can feel like a lot to do before you might be ready for the viva. If this is how you feel, let me suggest three easy wins to get you started:

  1. Put a small Post-it Note at the start of each chapter in your thesis. This makes your thesis easier to navigate.
  2. Bookmark the staff pages for your examiners. Later you can go to these directly when you want to explore their recent work.
  3. Decide on a simple system for annotating your thesis. Figure out what pens, colours, tabs and so on you will consistently use.

Three easy wins, probably ten minutes in total. A great start to viva prep. After this, just keep going. You’ll get where you need to be.

Nathan

The UnAbstract

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Look at the first statement of research in your thesis, your abstract. How clear is it? How would you explain it in plain, simple words? How would you remove jargon?

Would your abstract be enough to explain your ideas to a clever-but-less-knowledgeable person?

As a short viva prep exercise, consider writing a short UnAbstract. Something that doesn’t rely on specialist terms. Something that clearly states what you’ve done. It doesn’t mean you take each sentence of your abstract and simplify or de-jargon it. Use this opportunity this as a blank slate. Think about what your thesis actually does. Who is it for? Why would someone care about your research?

You’ve written thousands and thousands of words about your topic. Can you write a few more that are just plain, simple and clear about what you’ve done?

Nathan

The Viva Is A Good Heist Movie

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It really is! Like one of the George Clooney Ocean’s Eleven movies.

………

Let me explain:

  • You have heroes working to overcome an all-or-nothing challenge! (or at least that’s how it feels for the viva)
  • You have unexpected moments that have to be overcome as they happen! (where in the viva not every question can be anticipated)
  • You have talented protagonists with the attributes they need to succeed! (the only people taking part in the viva are highly talented candidates)

And finally you have the preparation. As much as there is satisfaction with the payoff from a heist or success in the viva, none of it would happen without the preparation. And no matter what you do to prepare for the viva, don’t forget all of the days spent doing research. They count. Those are your flashbacks. Those are the moments that add up to success.

So: the viva is a good heist movie.

Only with less casinos and criminality.

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