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Tag: viva preparation

Nathan

Thinking In Advance

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Creating summaries as part of viva prep helps you to gather useful thoughts. A summary is a chance to focus and gives you space to think in advance of the viva.

Write an overview of your thesis and you bring together a lot of helpful information.

Make a list of what you’re most proud of and you highlight ideas to share with your examiners.

Prepare a summary of your research methodology and you bring together valuable points.

Do any or all of these, or create any kind of summary, and you’re not creating a script to read from in your viva. You’re doing some of your thinking in advance though: you’re helping yourself to pre-consider topics you might need to engage with when you meet your examiners.

Nathan

Preparation Pressure

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Plan your viva prep with the pressure you need to get it done.

Time and circumstances are not completely within your control. Planning ahead allows you to think about the situation you need to work well.

If you need space to think, time to make mistakes and enough freedom that you can take a day off from viva preparation then give yourself plenty of time in your plan. Pressure won’t help you. That’s your preference.

Alternatively, if you feel like you need a bit of pressure, then still plan but start closer to your viva day. Work more intensively and focus your efforts on the week and days immediately leading up to your viva. That’s your preference.

Whatever you feel you need and whatever you decide to do, don’t confuse stress with pressure. A little pressure might help you to work well, but stress will only provide pain to your preparation plans.

Nathan

Multipliers for Viva Readiness

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There are many tasks and activities that help someone get ready for their viva. Reading the thesis, rehearsing with a mock viva and so on – the practical stuff that helps.

Alongside what you might need to do, consider how you get it done. How you do something has an impact on your effectiveness, and consequently on your readiness for the viva. All of the following help, for example:

  • Rest helps you to relax and helps you to think.
  • Time to do the work well.
  • A plan to help you feel organised.
  • A quiet, calm space to do the work.
  • Understanding the process of the viva.
  • Time to reflect and think.

It’s unlikely that every aspect of the viva prep work you do and the way you do it will be within your control. Consider how you can start with good intentions and work towards being ready for your viva.

Nathan

Revise or Review?

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Words matter.

It might help to think of viva prep as revising for a test. If that’s how you think of it then follow that impulse. Make a plan. Consider what you need to do. Build structure to help you get the work done. Thinking of viva prep as exam revision has merit.

Another consideration could be that viva prep is reviewing things. You don’t need to revise and re-learn everything. You already know what you know. Because you’ve been doing this for years you don’t need to revise and cram your mind with information. Instead you just have to review who you are, what you can do and how far you’ve come.

Words matter.

What words are you using to describe your process for getting ready?

Nathan

Superlatives

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Here is a small reflection and summary exercise to help gather useful information before your viva. Four questions:

  • What’s the best part of your thesis?
  • What was the least useful period of research during your PhD?
  • What was the hardest thing you learned?
  • What is your proudest achievement?

Take a moment to reflect for each of these. Write down your thoughts in keywords or sentences. Reflect more and then dig deeper for each by asking yourself, “Why?”

  • Why is this the best part of your thesis?
  • Why was that the least useful period?
  • Why is that the hardest thing you learned?
  • Why is that your proudest achievement?

Reflection questions are helpful for shaking loose ideas that are worth remembering or considering more.

“Why?” often allows one to dig a little deeper.

Nathan

The Sixth Activity

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There are six main types of activity that make up viva preparation.

Five of them are, in a strange way, quite similar. Candidates can prepare for their viva by:

  • Reading their thesis;
  • Annotating their thesis;
  • Creating summaries;
  • Reading recent publications;
  • Checking recent papers by their examiners.

These are quite different at first glance. They are all essential, helpful activities for viva prep – and also completely unlike what a candidate will do in the viva. That’s the strange similarity: they are essential for viva preparation but practically unlike what someone will do when they meet their examiners.

The sixth essential activity is finding opportunities to rehearse. Mock vivas, seminars, conversations with friend and more. Work that is much, much closer to the work you will do when you meet your examiners. Deliberate practice that helps you to be more comfortable for viva day.

The other five activities make a difference. They are essential, but they are not the same kind of actions that you will take in your viva.

Find opportunities to rehearse.

Nathan

What Does It Mean?

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What does this mean? What does that mean? What’s the difference between X and Y?

If there are any terms that you can remember being asked about a lot during your PhD, then take time to refresh your memory before your viva. If there are terms you use regularly while you do your work, be sure that they mean what you think they mean. Be sure that there aren’t edge cases or extra points you’ve forgotten.

You don’t need to know every fact, detail, reference and idea, but take time to unpick what common terms mean, especially if you’ve used them a lot.

Nathan

Schedule Your Prep

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You might not know your viva date at submission. Confirmation could come weeks after you have submitted. In some cases a candidate might only get two weeks warning of a viva date (assuming that the date works for them too).

Sketch out a plan for viva prep at submission. This might have some blanks. It might not have precise dates. But consider how busy you are and what commitments you have already.

When, where and how would you fit in viva preparation?

A schedule could have tasks broken down date by date or be a list of points you have to tackle. Any helpful structure you can give yourself at submission will help you appreciate the scope of what needs to be done, what questions you need to ask yourself and what further planning you need to do.

Then you need to do the work!

Nathan

No Shortcuts

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There’s no quick three-step process to getting ready for the viva.

You can’t bypass reading your thesis to refresh your memory.

No-one has invented a 5-minute mock viva that gets you two-hours of practise in 300 seconds.

There are no shortcuts to just doing the work – but the work involved in viva preparation really doesn’t take all that long. Maybe an hour per day for about four weeks leading up to your viva could be enough, even with taking a day off here and there.

It’s not nothing, but it’s a lot less than the hundreds of days and thousands of hours invested in your PhD up to submission. It’s a little more work to help you be ready for the particular challenge of your viva.

And given what’s at stake, why would anyone want a shortcut to being ready for their viva?

Nathan

Jargon Busting

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You probably have terms in your thesis that are unfamiliar to anyone who doesn’t do what you do. These could be names of key people in your field, references to important information or just a piece of jargon that means something important.

Over time words can become forgotten. To make sure that you have what you need, take an hour in your viva prep to refresh your memory.

Write a glossary of fancy words and jargon. Make a list of key names and data. It might seem like overkill to think and write about terms you know but a little extra thought won’t hurt to be sure you know what everything in your thesis means.

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