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Nathan

9 Questions For The End Of The PhD

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How often did you reflect during your PhD? Here are nine questions to help with some end of PhD reflection. Write or record answers for them. Your examiners are unlikely to ask some of these, but perhaps you’ll find some new insights.

  1. What’s your PhD worth?
  2. What does your PhD mean?
  3. What will you do next?
  4. What can you do now that you couldn’t do at the start?
  5. What do you know now that you didn’t know at the start?
  6. What was the greatest challenge you overcame?
  7. How did you do it?
  8. What did you leave unfinished?
  9. How do you feel now you’re at the end?

Come back to your answers after the viva. See if any of them have changed. If they have, why?

Nathan

Hierarchy of Worries

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I record every question I get asked in workshops. The text document runs to over 15,000 words now. Over time I see trends and themes, and they help me to think about how I evolve the workshop.

In particular I see the worries of candidates collect in three groups:

  • First, people worry that there could be something wrong with their research;
  • Second, they worry that they may have made a mistake in the write-up;
  • Third, they worry that they may not be able to answer a question from their examiners.

I get lots of questions related to all these areas, and I think they’re arranged in a hierarchy. I think people are more worried about the second kind of worries than they are the first; I think they’re more worried about the third kind than the second. It makes a certain kind of sense. Research takes a long time to mature – you know everything you’ve done, everything you thought of doing, you learned from so many mistakes and successes. You know your research. Writing up took less time – however much you know about your research, there’s a chance that you’ve made a significant typo or forgotten something. You may have expressed something in a clumsy way. It’s not all that likely.

Whatever you did in your research and write-up though, you have no way of knowing exactly what your examiners will ask. There are lots of common questions, but your viva is a custom exam: you can’t predict every question or how you might respond.

Three common groups of worries, but some are more worrying than others. What do you do?

  • Worried that something is wrong with your research? Map out your methods. Check the core literature. Test your assumptions again. Try to explain it to someone who doesn’t know that much.
  • Worried that you’ve slipped up somewhere in your thesis? Get more feedback. Read it closely, line by line, no skimming. Ask a friend to proofread. Read it aloud to check that it makes sense.
  • Worried about your examiners’ questions? Practise answering questions. Have a mock viva. Use a list of common viva questions and record your answers. Get friends to ask you any and every question about your research.

Feeling worried? That’s OK. Work your way past the worries.

Nathan

Cheatsheet

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What if you wanted to tell a friend about your research and you only had one sheet of paper? What would you put on this cheatsheet?

Would it have lots of pictures? Bullet-points? Would your abstract feature? And would it be black and white or full colour?

What would you leave out? What must you include? Do they need to know anything else in order to understand what you’re telling them?

Your friend would probably thank you, it’d be a neat insight into what you do.

If you do this, make two copies and keep one. You do valuable prep in creating the cheatsheet and then have a resource to refresh your memory later.

Nathan

Signs of Preparation

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Bookmarks, Post Its and annotation in your thesis help you, but they’re also a signal. They tell your examiners you have prepared for the viva. You’ve read your thesis and clearly thought about it a lot since submission. At the start of the viva it says, “I’m ready.” By that point, if you’ve done the work, you are.

Nathan

Curious Volumes

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Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”

I have an idea to write a parody of The Raven which is about the PhD or viva prep. The idea hasn’t fully come together in my mind.

As a starter, I like to imagine that the narrator is someone preparing for their viva. I can imagine that many researchers produce curious volumes! Towards the end they may be up late re-reading their thesis. Stressing over it perhaps – “weak and weary” – when someone knocks on their door.

Not a stranger, but a friend, offering to help. “What do you need?” That would be nice, right? You don’t have to do it all alone.

Of course you’re probably not sitting up at midnight hunched over your thesis, people (and ravens) probably don’t knock at your door that often after dark. So alternatively: go ask people for help. What would make the difference to you?

Nathan

Terrified

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The last time I was terrified was watching Get Out. I’m not going to spoil it, and if you intend to see the movie I suggest you stay spoiler-free.

I saw it at a lunchtime screening. Afterwards I walked out of the cinema with my heart pounding. I spent the rest of the day on a big adrenaline high. I’m really serious: it took about ten hours for the terror to go away. It’s a great, scary movie with a compelling story that leaves you with a lot to think about.

Nathan, this blog is about the viva and viva prep, where are you going with this?

I ask in workshops how candidates feel about their viva. Worried. Nervous. Unsure. Excited.

Sometimes they tell me they’re terrified. When they do I can tell they mean it, it’s not an exaggeration. They are beyond scared. The thought of the viva makes them terribly afraid.

I don’t have an easy answer to this problem. If scary movies make you terrified, you can avoid them. If the viva makes you terrified, you still have to have one. I’m a huge fan of Seth Godin and this post from March is really helpful if you’re facing viva fear. The level of fear or terror we get in the modern world is disproportionate; we’re not being hunted by large predator animals, but we can still have strong fear responses. But as Seth says in the post: “As soon as we give it a name, though, as soon as we call it out, we can begin to move forward.”

That’s the not-easy answer: if you have viva-fear, figure out what it is that makes you afraid, and then you can start to change.

Scared of what the examiners think and how you’ll respond? Get feedback from others so you have practice.

Worried that you’ll forget everything? Read your thesis carefully and make some summaries for yourself.

Terrified that you’ll freeze when asked a question? Have a mock viva or get friends to ask questions.

Once you name your fear you can do something about it.

Nathan

Decisions

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It’s the General Election in the UK today. Today is a day for a decision – but then so is every day.

Every day is a series of decisions, some big, some small, some that don’t matter and many that do. There are decisions that only you care about, and decisions that you wish you didn’t have to make. There are decisions that will change things forever and some that are just one of many options that seem fairly similar – you have to pick something and so you do.

The PhD is a series of decisions. The viva might explore some of them. Which methodology did you pick and why? Why study this topic in this way? Why do X instead of Y? Why did you come to that conclusion? Why, why, why, why…

The PhD is a series of decisions that you make, and the viva is where you try to account for them. Some of them aren’t right or wrong – they just are. They need an explanation or an argument to support them. Your examiners may disagree or have a point of view that needs accounting for. “Why?” is a good place to start there too. Once it has been asked then there’s no place to hide: both parties need to listen, think and come to a conclusion.

Unpicking decisions can be a useful prep tool for the viva, both to strengthen arguments and prepare for answers.

Nathan

Montage

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The greatest training montage ever captured on film is the 3-odd minute training scene in Rocky III. You can check it out here if you’ve never seen it. It’s awesome. If nothing else, add the music to your inspirational playlist.

It shows a process that’s a bit a like preparing for the viva: Rocky’s in great shape but isn’t quite there yet for the competition. After your research is done and your thesis is finished you’re awesome, but you could probably still use some work for the viva. You don’t have to spar, run laps down a sunny beach or build up massive quantities of muscle though.

Read your thesis to remind yourself of everything in there. Answer some unexpected questions from your supervisor or friends. Look for ways to boost your confidence. Make some notes about what’s important. There’s lots you can do to help yourself.

Training montages show someone developing to a peak of excellence. What would be in your viva prep montage? Think about how much time you’ve got, what things you can do, then go do them.

Nathan

Magpie

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“Hello Mr Magpie, how’s your wife?”

If you see a lonely magpie then you’re supposed to ask where his wife is, supposedly to ward away sorrow or bad things. I don’t know where the superstition comes from, I heard it at a very young age. I would never consider myself to be a superstitious person, but for some reason this has hooked into my brain. I can’t get rid of it. Whenever I see a magpie I look around hoping to see a friend for it, and if I don’t I whisper, “Hello Mr Magpie, how’s your wife?”

I wouldn’t class myself as superstitious, but I did wear a pair of my “good day socks” to my viva.

I often listen to Daft Punk while I set up for a workshop, it puts me in a happy sort of state that I find really helpful.

You should do none of these things. These are things that help or have helped me. You can call them superstition, ritual, process, practice, whatever. For the viva, think about the things that help you: a good night’s sleep, psyching yourself up, listening to music, three coffees, someone saying good luck (or not). Find what helps you.

But if you see a lonely magpie, say hi from me.

Nathan

First Thoughts

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Here’s a quick reflective exercise for the end of the PhD. Take a sheet of paper, divide it into three:

  • In the top write WHY: why did you do a PhD? Answer the question.
  • In the middle write HOW: how did you do a PhD? Answer the question.
  • At the bottom write WHAT: what did you find during your PhD? Answer the question.

What were your motivations? How did you go about doing research? What were the results?

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