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Tag: viva prep

Nathan

5 Questions To Ask Your Supervisor After Submission

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When it comes to asking for help from your supervisor a lot of focus is given to mock vivas. While these can be valuable, there are other questions you could ask that will help a lot. Here are five valuable questions to ask your supervisor:

  1. What do you need to know about your examiners’ work? You may know a lot, or have ideas, but it’s good to get another perspective.
  2. Are there any parts of your research they think your examiners could challenge? That doesn’t mean something is wrong, but it’s good to get thinking.
  3. What do they see your most important contribution as being? Again, you’ll have your own thoughts, but their opinion counts.
  4. What are the most recent papers or developments in your field? Explore what you might have missed while writing up your thesis.
  5. What do they do when they examine a thesis? Find out if there is a process that is common in your field, or at least get some ideas of how examiners think about the viva.

Your supervisor’s help doesn’t stop at submission. You might have to pick your moment or negotiate a good meeting time to discuss some of these topics, but they could all help a lot with your viva preparation. Think about it, then ask for what will help you the most.

Nathan

No Shortcuts

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There’s no secret path that takes you to the end of the PhD.

There’s no list of amazing tips that dodges all of the work involved.

You can’t hack your way past the necessary steps that got your thesis finished.

And that’s good.

All of the work you put into the PhD makes you amazingly qualified for your viva. There’s no way of doing the PhD without putting the hours in. All of those hours help you when you sit down to talk with your examiners.

Nathan

New Questions

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When you’re preparing for the viva, if you just ask the same questions as before to unpick your research you won’t uncover anything new.

If you find new questions then you could find a new perspective. Find different questions, odd questions, unfamiliar questions and then perhaps you could find something interesting.

Something to focus on. Something to check. Something to change. Something to revise. Something to share.

Look for new questions, new opportunities to reflect on and think through your work.

Something great.

Nathan

Future Focus

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It can be hard to look past the end of the PhD.

Try to imagine graduating. Picture crossing the stage at graduation, if it helps. Picture shaking the hand of someone distinguished. It’s a symbol that says you did it. That moment is months away perhaps, maybe longer, but it’s out there.

You’ll get there.

Imagine future opportunities (some you could be working towards now, even before you submit or have your viva). A job, a business, a series of projects or maybe even just a long-awaited break.

You’ll get there.

You just have to keep doing the work now.

A focus on the future can help make the present more hopeful. If you’re feeling stuck, if you’re unsure, if you’re bored, or even happy but only thinking about the viva or getting your thesis, then think about the future.

Think, I’ll get there; so what do I do now?

Nathan

Reflecting on the Edited Bibliography

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I like the idea of making an edited bibliography as part of viva preparations: figuring out the core of your bibliography and where your research comes from.

You can go a step further than just making a list of your best references. Start with the following questions to really reflect on your research:

  1. Pick a paper. Why is it more valuable than many others in your bibliography?
  2. Which chapter is it most relevant to?
  3. How, explicitly, have you used it in furthering your work?
  4. What other papers does it connect up with in your edited bibliography?
  5. Are there any downsides to basing your work on this paper?
  6. Think about the whole list. How do these papers fit together?
  7. How many groups could you place them in, and how would you label them?
  8. What papers have you left out of your edited bibliography and why?
  9. If you could add one more paper to your edited bibliography, what would it be and why?

During your PhD, you dig into your field to help bring your research to life. During your viva prep, you can dig into your bibliography to help yourself even more.

Keep digging.

Nathan

Two Weeks

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Thesis done? Submitted?

Take at least two weeks off.

Take two weeks away from reading your thesis, making notes or trying to unpick what all that work has been about. There is plenty of time to prepare for the viva. If you feel like you must do something then check recent journals and stimulate your brain with some new ideas.

You don’t need to keep going with your thesis. In fact, you’ll probably see things with more clarity when you get some distance from your work.

Nathan

Small Projects

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This post on small projects has been in my mind for several years. It’s worth a read! I like the idea that it can be both more productive and more effective to work on creating small things rather than undertaking massive endeavours. For example, I see Viva Survivors as a series of small projects under one umbrella, rather than one big behemoth.

I’ve been casting my mind around for a while on other small projects for the site, and at the time of writing have the following in my to-do queue:

  • Add tags and keywords to every post from the daily blog.
  • Curate a few lists of posts on similar themes.
  • Produce pages for each of the books that I have available (rather than only a single hub page).
  • Produce a new season of the podcast, approx 8 episodes that become available at the same time, like an album!
  • Create a few more Pocketmod tiny books, and several more minicast episodes.

Small projects are manageable. Even if you don’t have time to work on something immediately, you can see most of the parts and see where the challenges are. It’s the opposite of most research projects, where often you can’t appreciate everything until you’re already in it.

Viva prep can be a series of small projects, and none of them have to be over-taxing to complete. Reading your thesis and marking it up in a useful way is a small project. Creating summaries to draw out your thoughts is a couple of small projects. A mock viva or presentation to give you opportunity to think and talk is a small project. It all helps.

For your thesis, you had to think big. Maybe for your viva prep it’s useful to think small.

Nathan

Not Favours

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It could be that you need a little help from others to get ready for the viva. Help with thinking and talking; questions about process and experience; maybe even proofreading or practical on-the-day logistics.

You have to defend your work solo, but there really are lots of ways others can help you prepare. Get clear in your mind about what you need, ask and explain why (if you need to), and be prepared to compromise.

It could also be the case that you see a friend who needs help. A candidate who needs someone to talk to; a colleague who needs someone to listen; a friend who has a problem that they can’t see past.

It’s OK to ask for help when you need it; it’s good to offer help when you can.

Nathan

A Few More Words

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There’s a lot of empty margins in a thesis. A lot of space free in headers and footers. And in the centre of most pages a LOT of words.

A thesis is a summary of at least three years of research. An embedding of thoughts into words. It’s taken time to get it all just so.

When you’re reading it all back, remember that a few more words can make a difference:

  • The right word in a margin can draw your attention to something important.
  • A few words in pencil can decode a piece of jargon or a tricky acronym.
  • Ten new words at the top of a page can summarise the other 300 you’ve written.

Annotation helps. Don’t be afraid to add a few more words.

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