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Tag: viva process

Nathan

Matters Of Context

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Many aspects of the viva, viva prep, viva expectations and what to do in the many related situations depend on the circumstances.

  • Do you start to prepare two weeks or four weeks before?
  • Do you need to admit when you’ve spotted a mistake in your thesis?
  • Should you have an examiner whose work you’ve cited in your bibliography?
  • Can you challenge an examiner’s comment?
  • Should you invite your supervisor to your viva?
  • Is a mock viva necessary?
  • Do you need to focus on your methods, your results or your conclusions more?

So many questions. So many scenarios. No easy answers.

It depends.

Explore the context. What does that question mean in your situation? What do you need to do? What is the real issue that you are unsure about?

Nathan

An Invitation

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Your examiners are invited to be at your viva. Like most invitations they can decline if they need to or want to.

A viva is a much bigger commitment than the hours on the day for an examiner. If they accept and attend it’s because, more than anything, they find the invitation to be compelling. There is something about your work as it’s been presented that makes them think it will be a good use of their time.

Reflect on what your examiners might be seeing in your work. Focus on that as part of your preparations. How can you share your research with them? What do you need to do to be prepared? And how can you make sure that the invitation they’ve said yes to results in a good experience for them?

When you have ideas for that question you’ll also have ideas for what will help the viva to be a good experience for you too.

Nathan

Before You Finish

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Before you submit your thesis check and double-check that it says everything you want it to say.

Before your viva day take time to get ready: practical preparations and confidence building!

Before your viva begins spend a couple of moments breathing, reminding yourself that you have done everything you can to get ready and that you have done enough to pass your viva.

Before the end of your viva take a moment to see if there are any questions you want to ask your examiners.

And before you finish your PhD journey take a little time to really reflect on what the journey has meant to you.

It’s more than a book you’ve written or a piece of paper you get from your institution.

Nathan

Anti-Expectations

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There are lots of key viva expectations, based around the typical length, the structure, tone and overall (high!) pass rate.

There are also anti-expectations that are much more particular to individuals: beliefs and expectations that, despite the general picture, something will go wrong this time, for them. Hardworking, capable candidates can come to believe that…

  • …they won’t pass, despite what everyone says.
  • …examiners are not going to be fair, they’ll just look for problems and mistakes.
  • …they just can’t be ready in time for the viva.

With viva anti-expectations, worries are jumped on and magnified. Details from one viva story are generalised. Anxieties blossom through misunderstanding and become something difficult to be shifted.

 

Of course, every viva is unique. It would be ridiculous to claim that every viva is free from problems. But the overwhelming evidence from the stories presented and the available understanding of the general situation is that vivas are fair, examiners are reasonable and prepared, vivas are structured and they can be prepared for.

If you hold any anti-expectations, then look for the evidence that supports them. Is it convincing? Is there even evidence for what you’re expecting?

Or is it better to explore the general expectations of the viva that you can use to get ready?

Nathan

Running Updates

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Updates need to be installed.

How do you feel when your computer gives you that notification?

Updates need to be installed. It’s not a suggestion. It’s not something you can do if it sounds good. It needs to happen. Maybe not immediately, but in the near future.

And yet despite the need, your computer will probably still work fine without them; it will still turn on, fire up, navigate to Viva Survivors for the latest post – but your computer will be better with the updates installed.

 

Thesis corrections are like a software update.

Your thesis needs corrections probably. You’ll be notified of what they are. You won’t have to drop everything but you will need to do them. Maybe not immediately, but within a matter of weeks. You’ll be told what they’re for. You’ll be told why they need to be done. And your thesis might be fine without them in some cases, but it will be better when they’re done.

 

Software updates can be inconvenient, so you might want to do them at the end of a day or at the weekend. They appear without warning sometimes – which is where the comparison to thesis corrections breaks down!

It’s very likely you’ll need to complete corrections after your viva. So likely that it’s worth checking the regulations in advance to learn the timescale involved. So likely that it’s worth looking in your diary and marking out a few times, in the first instance, when you could do some of the work involved.

Computer updates appear without warning. Thesis corrections can be expected.

Nathan

Your Preferences & Needs

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Preferences are the things that we’d like, but which we could work around if needed. Preferences for your viva and viva prep might include:

  • Starting in a morning;
  • Reading your thesis with a fresh pot of coffee;
  • Knowing your external a little;
  • Having a mock viva to help you get ready.

You might have a strong preference but, for example, if your supervisor was unable to host a mock viva then you would still go on.

Needs are different. For your viva and viva prep you might need:

  • Advance notice or special arrangements for your viva;
  • Specific stationery or time to annotate your thesis;
  • Agreement that your viva will definitely be over video;
  • To not have a mock viva!

Preferences are very different from needs.

 

To begin with: what do you want for your viva? Which of these wants are preferences and which are needs?

For the preferences: what can you do to get your preferences met? Who might you need to ask for help? What could you do if a preference couldn’t be fulfilled?

For your needs: what can you do to ensure your needs are met? Who can you ask for support? How can you clearly communicate those needs to the people who need to know?

Nathan

The Hardest Part

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Viva preparation is a big part of getting ready. It takes time for a candidate to make sure their thesis is ready and that they feel prepared to sit down and talk with their examiners. Lots of practical tasks and a little planning can make a big difference.

Building up confidence is an important task too. In some ways it’s even more important than the practical tasks that go into prep. It’s not enough to sit down and read your thesis or have a mock viva: you have to feel that you are ready. You have to find your confidence by reflecting on your journey.

While viva prep and confidence building are essential, exploring them often means that we overlook the hardest part of getting ready for the viva – and the one that every candidate has completed.

The hardest part is doing the work of a PhD candidate for years. The hardest part is laying the foundations for study, exploration and development. The hardest part of getting ready for the viva is the thousands of hours of work, invested over hundreds and hundreds of days when you show up.

You need to spend a few weeks getting ready, preparing your thesis and yourself, and reflecting on why you are good enough to succeed in the viva. Don’t forget that the hardest part of your journey to the viva and to success is already behind you.

Nathan

Considering Outcomes

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A few loose thoughts…

 

Viva regulations are impersonal.

They give structure. Section 2, paragraph 3, check appendix 2A.

Regulations say yes and no. They specify and describe: this is a pass, this is a fail.

 

But viva outcomes are not a binary. Most people pass, but they pass in different ways. Most people pass with minor corrections, but all corrections are unique, in the same way that all candidates and their theses are unique.

Universities offer multiple outcomes that are passes – no corrections, minor corrections, major corrections and more. Typically there’s only one real category of failure, something that the vast majority of candidates don’t experience.

 

When considering viva outcomes, the point that stands out to me most is that every candidate has to find the meaning and the value in their success. Rules and regulations don’t care: you do.

What does your PhD mean to you?

What’s going to keep you going while you finish and have your viva?

And how will you celebrate your success when you find it?

Nathan

You Get To Have A Viva

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It’s worth remembering, when you’ve submitted and you’re working towards your viva day, that it might not have gone this way. Despite the associated nerves and negativity that people attach to the viva, having one is not guaranteed.

You might have decided to stop pursuing a PhD. Circumstances, particularly during the last three years or so, might have made continuing with research impossible. Things might not have worked out with your supervisor, financial pressures could have been too great or your research ideas might have not developed.

But instead you did the work. You solved problems and overcame challenges. Things worked out enough. You submitted your thesis and now it’s not the case that you have to have a viva – you get to have a viva.

It’s work. It’s a challenge. It matters so it might make you nervous. But it’s a really good thing.

You get to have a viva. Remember that.

Nathan

Miskates Happen

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I have to turn off the captions for myself when I deliver a webinar.

It might help some participants to see an AI-generated track of my words, but I can’t see them on my screen. For the most part they’re a reasonable transcript of what I’m saying; whenever I see the wrong thing transcribed in the moment it trips me up, it breaks my flow and I feel I have to do something to set it right.

But I can’t, not in that moment. Because I have something more important to do. If someone else doesn’t understand and needs to, they can ask, but I have to keep my focus on presenting.

And all of this is not all that different from the situations faced by PhD candidates in the viva and during their preparation.

If you find typos, just make a note of them. Where are they? What’s the correction?

If you find something unclear, make a note. What’s the problem? How could you make it clear?

Once you’ve made your notes, move on. Read some more, make some more notes. On to the next prep.

In the viva, acknowledge the mistake, correct it simply if you need to and then move on to the next question or next part of the discussion. There’s more important things to do than dwell on mistakes in the viva.

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