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Tag: viva prep

Nathan

Talking Comfortably

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I think a huge part of viva confidence for a candidate is based on feeling comfortable when talking about their research.

Examiners need to ask the candidate questions, they need to share opinions and they need the candidate to respond so that they can have a discussion and examine. Candidates have to do their part and want to do their part, but too often worry that they won’t be able to in the moment.

  • “What if I forget something?”
  • “What if there’s a long pause?”
  • “What if I don’t know something?”
  • “What if it’s a bit awkward or I’m hesitant?”

The short answer for all of these questions and worries is that the viva will still happen. It’ll continue however you feel, but will feel better for you if you’re able to talk with some confidence about your research and all the related things your examiners want to discuss.

How do you get to talk comfortably? You prepare. You read your thesis and think and make notes. More important than anything you take time to rehearse for being in the viva through opportunities like a mock viva.

You can’t be ready with pre-loaded responses to every conceivable question or comment.

You can be ready to engage with whatever question your examiners ask by taking time before the viva to rehearse.

Have a mock viva. Talk with friends. Talk with your supervisor. Make opportunities to be in situations where you’ll talk about your work and respond to questions. Make sure you have real experience before the viva so that you feel more comfortable talking about your PhD research.

Nathan

Chapter Headlines

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The chapters in your thesis might have titles, but what are the headlines?

How could you summarise what they’re all about in a few short sentences? What details or terms do you need to emphasise? What points must you get across?

A short headline or two for each chapter could be a neat and simple way to add a few useful annotations to your thesis. What would you add?

Nathan

The Best Bits

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What are the best bits of your thesis?

What are your favourite memories of doing research?

What stands out when you think about how you’ve developed as a postgraduate researcher?

It’s important to spend time to reflect on difficult things and hard topics – but equally important to be certain about the good in your work and in your growth as a researcher.

Focus on the best bits first.

Nathan

Set Prep Goals

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It’s not enough to plan your viva prep and write read my thesis: you have to spell out what you’re trying to achieve by doing that.

Don’t just pencil in a date for your mock viva: what do you want from that experience?

And you can’t simply allocate time for checking a few papers written by your external: what do you want to know from reading them?

Plan your prep so you have an idea of how and when you’ll do the work.

Set prep goals so you have a good sense of what you’re achieving and how it will help you.

Nathan

Small Step, Big Impact

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What viva prep actions would have a great impact on how ready you were for your viva?

I’m thinking about the Pareto principle – in brief, that 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes – and I wonder how it might apply to viva prep and building confidence for the viva.

I don’t have an answer! I do have some thoughts though:

  • Having certainty about the viva process increases calm and confidence. Asking supervisors and colleagues, reading regulations and even searching online are all small actions that can have a big impact.
  • Reading your thesis again won’t take a very long time but can really help with sharing your research, formulating responses and generally feeling secure for the viva.
  • Rehearsing and talking about your thesis is a great preparation step that doesn’t take very long compared with tasks like annotating or reviewing papers.

Some big activities in viva prep can be broken down into little steps that add up. But perhaps some small actions by themselves can give big advantages to being ready.

I’ll have to think more about this! But perhaps you already have ideas of little things that you know will help you to feel ready.

Nathan

An Alphabet Of Actions

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What could you do to get ready for your viva? A lot! For example you could:

  • Annotate your thesis to make a better version for yourself.
  • Brief your friends and family on how they could support you.
  • Create a cheatsheet of key ideas and notes about your research.
  • Discuss what you can expect with your supervisor.
  • Explore the thesis examination regulations for your institution.
  • Find out what friends and colleagues have heard about the viva.
  • Give a seminar to have a little practice talking about your work.
  • Host a viva prep club where you meet with others getting ready.
  • Identify key points about your examiners’ recent research.
  • Join a friend for coffee and a chance to share your research.
  • Keep a record of your actions to help boost your confidence.
  • Listen to podcasts or interviews of PhD graduates.
  • Make a plan for your viva prep.
  • Notice what stands out about your research.
  • Organise your notes and resources for prep.
  • Prioritise your preparation to make sure you cover the important tasks.
  • Question your supervisor about your research.
  • Rest. Simply rest.
  • Summarise your research contribution in a single page.
  • Talk about your research more generally to have some rehearsal for the viva.
  • Understand the viva experience and how that relates to regulations and expectations.
  • Verify your viva date, location and process.
  • Work towards being ready by simply doing things and ticking them off your list.
  • X-out, or mark the days leading up to your viva when you do something to get closer to being ready.
  • Yawn – in which case you need to rest some more!
  • Zero in on what makes you a good candidate.

All of these could help but finding what makes you a good candidate – in terms of your knowledge, your research outcomes, your thesis, your success – is really important. It’s the kind of work that helps develop confidence.

It’s last on this list, but not least in importance. Take time to reflect on what makes you a good candidate.

Remember that success and confidence are founded on your actions – and there are many, many actions you can take to build confidence for your viva.

Nathan

Crisis

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It feels like something big and earth-shattering has happened at least every few weeks for the last couple of years. The news starts to settle and something else comes up to disturb the peace.

This doesn’t have to be on a global or national scale either. In your daily life you can be upset and off-balance simply because the train is late, you catch a cold or you get sad news. Your short- and medium-term plans can be knocked to one side by somebody else’s change of plans or a sudden change of circumstances.

As you prepare for your viva, take a few small steps to help yourself just in case something was to go a little bit wrong:

  • Find and save emergency contact details for a member of staff who could help (if you had to postpone or an examiner cancelled, for example).
  • Plan your viva preparation with “wiggle room” – in case something disruptive happens.
  • Make as many decisions in advance as you can: what you’ll wear for the viva, what you need to have with you, what you will do on the morning of your viva day.

Build as much certainty as you can and take out small steps to guard against crisis and disruption.

Everything will be alright with your viva, but it might not all be exactly as you imagine or plan!

Nathan

Key Terms

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The Kauffman polynomial.

Two-variable polynomials for unoriented links.

Genus 2 mutations.

Reidemeister moves.

These were all things I knew and needed to know in order to do my PhD research – but which I also needed to get my head clear on in advance of my viva.

I realised as I was preparing for my viva that for too long I’d just known what these things were in an abstract way. Even in writing up my thesis I’d written and rewritten what different technical terms and ideas meant many times.

There’s a lot to share in the viva. You’ll have a lot of valuable ideas and information you want to get across to your examiners. While you will take time thinking about how to summarise your results, make sure you leave time to consider the key terms that underpin your research.

Refresh your memory, review your notes and rehearse how you will communicate what the important things mean.

Nathan

But You Didn’t

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There’s a lot you could have done during your PhD. By the time you submit you’ll be aware of the alternate methods, different approaches, endless questions you could have explored or papers you could have read but didn’t.

Particularly given the 2020s so far, you can imagine that many candidates will have made plans and had to change them: forced by COVID or other circumstances to find new ways to do things or different directions to go in. Maybe your own situation over the last few years has involved disruption or changes due to the pandemic.

“Maybe I should have… Maybe I could have… Maybe it would be better if…”

It’s only natural, with all these thoughts and more, to think about alternatives and other possibilities, even what might have been. It can be helpful as part of viva prep to be aware of how other methods work or have a guess at what a different research focus or opportunity might have brought.

However, it won’t help to think about those things at the expense of considering what you have actually done though. Whatever possibilities you’ve had to forego, if you’ve made it to submission and you’re preparing for your viva that means you did something right.

It means you succeeded. It means you have something to be proud of and something to focus on.

You didn’t do a lot of things during your PhD, for a lot of reasons.

What you did is amazing and worth preparing to talk about in your viva.

Nathan

10 Tiny Prep Steps

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Because small things add up:

  1. Download your institution’s viva regulations.
  2. Bookmark your examiners’ staff pages.
  3. Add a sticky note to the start of each thesis chapter.
  4. Write one sentence about why you wanted to do a PhD.
  5. Take one minute to think about how you could annotate your thesis.
  6. Write down three questions you need to ask your supervisor.
  7. List three good things about your research.
  8. Message a friend and ask if they want to get coffee.
  9. Bookmark the mini-vivas resource for use when you get coffee!
  10. Take one minute to write a list of viva prep tasks you need to do.

There’s lots of big things to do to get ready for your viva, but very step – no matter how tiny – adds to your overall preparation.

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