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Nathan

The Details

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You probably can’t commit your thesis to memory, getting every fine detail stored away somewhere.

But you could make lists of key places in your thesis where you can find useful information. You could make a couple of summary card prompts. You can highlight important sections with Post-it Notes. You could create a little index card with page numbers and helpful hints. You can do a lot to make your thesis clearer.

You don’t need to remember everything for the sake of the viva. Doing what you can to help your memory of the details will help your confidence.

Nathan

8 Things You Need To Know About The Viva

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I ask people at the start of Viva Survivor sessions what they need to know about the viva. I ask if they have gaps of knowledge, worries about what might happen or vague hypotheticals.

I’m happy to answer anything and everything that candidates want to talk about. Recently, a participant in a session turned the question around on me: what did I think people needed to know?

It’s a good question. Here’s my answer:

  1. The vast majority of candidates pass the viva. This doesn’t “just happen”…
  2. …candidates pass the viva because of what they’ve done, what they know and what they can do. Perfection is not the goal or expectation. Candidates must necessarily be really good at what they do to get to submission and the viva.
  3. Examiners will be prepared, and that’s a good thing. They’ve read your thesis, made notes and thought a lot about questions; that’s far better than the alternative!
  4. Examiners may have challenging questions, but they ask them with respect for you and your work. They’re not there to interrogate or tear work apart. Questions can be challenging, but that’s due to the nature and standard of the research involved.
  5. There are broad expectations for what the viva is like. These aren’t secret.
  6. Most candidates get some form of corrections. You probably will too. Examiners recommend them to help make the best possible thesis submission.
  7. The viva can be prepared for. You can’t anticipate and have model answers for every question, but by preparing well you can be ready and confident to answer any question that comes up.
  8. The viva might be the final test, but it’s not the only test. You’ve invested a lot of time and energy into your PhD: the viva is not the only milestone you’ve passed. You’ve consistently applied yourself and achieved. The viva is one more time you have to meet the standard.

And that’s what I think candidates need to know about the viva.

Nathan

Waiting

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There isn’t a perfect time to start preparing for the viva. You don’t really need to start until after you’ve submitted; apart from that you have to think sensibly about your priorities. How you can add this work to your other commitments?

If you think you can manage all the things you need to do in two weeks, that’s fine. Need a month to space things out? No problem.

But… If you’re not sure, if you’re just leaving things for a while… If you’re waiting for the right time… What are you waiting for?

What’s going to be different? What will make next week better than now?

There’s no danger you might be overprepared if you do something now rather than save it for later.

Far better not to wait, start well, than to leave it and rush.

Nathan

All Of The Above?

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There’s a lot of everything.

  • There’s hundreds of references in your thesis. You don’t need to check all of them before the viva.
  • Your examiners have probably published a lot. You don’t need to read everything of theirs.
  • You have pages and pages of important ideas in your thesis. You don’t need to memorise them all.
  • There are lots of questions you might be asked in the viva. You can’t rehearse and prepare for them all.
  • There are many ways you can explore your thesis and annotate it before you meet your examiners. You can’t follow up every idea.

But you have to do something.

You have to take some time. You have to think about what’s missing. You have to explore for yourself what you need to do. You have to take the time, because no-one else can. You might need to be a little brave in some cases, because once you know you need to do something then you need to do it or you’ll only feel worried.

But you can do it. If you got this far through your PhD, you can do this.

Finally, there are over 750 posts on this blog. You don’t need to have read them all to be ready for your viva – but there’s a lot that will help!

Nathan

Three Favourite Summaries

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I like thinking about and developing ideas to get people creating summaries of their thesis.

An essential part of the viva prep process is to think about your research, and it’s useful to take a step back and try to think differently. Rather than let that thinking be abstract and drift away, it makes sense to capture it, both to help clarify what you think and to build a resource.

While I’ve been tinkering away on lots of ideas for a long time, when I deliver a Viva Survivor session, there are three in particular I recommend to candidates:

  1. “What’s Important?” – a simple, powerful question, framed on a single sheet of paper for each chapter. “What’s important?” can prompt a lot of thoughts in a lot of different ways, and restricting the answer to one side of paper for a chapter forces you to be thoughtful and not just wander off.
  2. Edited Bibliography – a prompt to explore the most useful references that support your thesis. Your thesis bibliography might stretch to hundreds and hundreds of articles, but what’s at the core of that? What would help a reader more than anything? What helps your research more than anything? What are the twenty or thirty most useful references? That’s your edited bibliography.
  3. A VIVA Summary – using four prompts to analyse a chapter and really direct your thoughts about your thesis. What’s Valuable to others in this chapter? What is Interesting to you? What do you find Vague or unclear? What questions might you like to Ask your examiners? These four prompts help to explore not just the ideas in your thesis, but how you express them, how you made them real and a lot more.

These are my favourites, and they can help a lot. If you try them, let me know how well they work for you!

Nathan

The Most Effective Viva Prep Strategy

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Or MEVPS, for short.

There isn’t one, not one that works for everyone. Everyone is different, every candidate has a unique thesis, every candidate has a unique set of circumstances and a unique situation when they get to preparation time for the viva. So to say, “Here: the MEVPS is X, Y and Z and you’ll be fine!” would a terrible lie. I don’t have a MEVPS to offer.

But I do have a strategy for building a useful, unique approach for you:

  1. Reflect on the particular gaps you have in your knowledge or confidence for the viva.
  2. List some things you could do to fill those gaps, estimating generously how much time they might take.
  3. Reflect on how busy you are generally, then see how the tasks you need to do can fit in with your life.
  4. Make a simple plan, pick a start date and be kind to yourself with what you will do on that first day.
  5. Start, and follow through on the plan.

The details will be different for everyone, but everyone can figure out a route to being prepared by following the SFSPFCAPVPP.

(that’s Simple Five Step Process For Creating A Personal Viva Prep Plan!)

Nathan

The Value of Valuable Questions

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I love finding valuable questions. I try to read as widely as possible in things like self-help books, coaching blogs and interviews with interesting people. The ideas and advice are often helpful, but a good question hooks my attention more than anything.

In a recent TEDx post I came across a really insightful question:

“What’s the most important thing I can do today that would make tomorrow better?“

The article is asking in the context of time management and organisation, but this makes me think more generally. Perhaps, what can I do today to make my future brighter? What can I start now to set up a better later?

It gives me two thoughts for the viva and viva prep particularly. First, what’s the most important thing you can do today for your prep that will make the rest of your viva preparations better?

Second, what important things have you done throughout your PhD that makes your current situation great?

Preparation and reflection both help as you get close to the viva.

What other valuable questions help you? And where could you get more from?

Nathan

A Contentious Thesis?

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Don’t worry. It means you have something interesting in your research. It means that in the viva your examiners have a lot to ask about.

And it means you’ve been working on your thesis for a long time. You will know how to engage with people who aren’t sure. With people who want to know more. With people who have their own ideas.

So read up, think, have a mock viva and conversations with friends, and get ready to explore your work.

Nathan

It’s Not An Interview

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The viva seems like a job interview from some perspectives. In both cases you might decide to dress smart. Both vivas and job interviews ask questions to explore, at least in part, how great you are.

That’s about all though. The purposes and outcomes are very different. Despite that, there are similar things you could do in both situations to get ready.

  • Explore what your panel will want to talk about: for both situations you can know aspects of this in advance.
  • Reflect and make notes on the great parts of yourself and your work: think about evidence and how you could explain things clearly.
  • Find opportunities to practise answering questions: there may be common questions in interviews to which you could practise answers, but for the viva you can prepare well by finding situations to practise with unexpected questions.

The viva is not really like a job interview, but there’s value in thinking in some of the same ways when it comes to preparation.

Nathan

The Three Rs of Viva Prep

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I have a new pet theory.

The work involved in preparing for the viva can be summarised with three Rs: refreshing, reframing and rehearsing.

  • Refreshing: getting your head clearer about what you’ve done. Checking your thesis and what helped shape it.
  • Reframing: looking differently at your work. Exploring what it means and trying to see it from different perspectives.
  • Rehearsing: finding opportunities to practise what’s required of the viva. Finding ways to engage with questions and have useful conversations.

To be ready for the viva means spending time on tasks that allow these three things. Effective viva preparation involves improving your mental picture of your research, examining it from other perspectives, and investing time in preparing for being in the viva itself. Different viva prep tasks might require a combination of the Rs. Annotating your thesis, for example, might bridge between refreshing and reframing; a mock viva is largely about rehearsing, but could involve refreshing or reframing as well.

I’ll write more about the three Rs in the future. I don’t have a fully worked out model yet, but I’m excited about this concept for exploring viva preparation tasks. I’m hopeful that it will help me to better communicate what viva prep is all about.

Email me if you have questions or thoughts about this – it might help me to explain the idea better!

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