Daily viva help for PhDs
“How do I stay focussed in the viva?” has the same response as “How do I engage well in the viva?”
You listen.
You pause.
You think.
You check details in your thesis.
You ask questions.
You make notes.
You share the best responses that you can to provide context, information and demonstrate who you are and what you did.
Engaging well keeps your focus. Keeping focus helps you to engage well.
The viva’s not the first time you’ve responded to questions about your work.
It’s not the first time in your PhD journey you’ve been tested.
You have to have risen to challenges many, many times to get to submission.
And your viva is not the first ever viva! Lots of people around you – and people who you don’t know on the internet – have experiences that can help you unpick what to do and how you could feel about your upcoming viva.
Again and again you’ve worked hard to get to this stage of your PhD. A little more will help you finish.
There are lots of necessary breaks before, during and after your viva.
When you submit it’s good to pause from looking at your thesis and thinking about your PhD research. You might have other research work to do but at least break from looking at your thesis. Then you can have a fresh perspective when you come to prepare for your viva.
During the viva there are lots of good reasons to have breaks, big and small. A micro-break could be to simply pause while you consider a question or look for something in your thesis. A regular break in the viva could be to use the bathroom, compose yourself or attend to any medical need. You can always ask your examiners for a break.
And after your viva it’s likely your examiners will ask for a short break so they can discuss what has happened and what they need to do now to complete the examination process. While they talk about your corrections it’s a good idea for you to plan ahead to do something – get some water, use the bathroom, get some fresh air – so that you’re not simply waiting.
After your viva is done, try to take a break if you can. A little time out can help you appreciate the milestone you’ve reached and refresh you for the next stage of your journey.
Before your viva you could be nervous about what’s going to happen.
After your viva you’ll maybe struggle to understand how it happened so quickly.
And between those two points you might not notice what’s really happening because you’re so engaged by what’s going on.
You can’t know what your examiners will ask you at your viva.
You can have a good idea of what topics they will be interested in. You can make reasonable guesses. You can expect certain lines of questioning. You can look at past patterns, vague or clear, from what others tell you about their experiences.
And while all that is useful it is still very different from knowing what questions you are going to be asked.
It’s important to prepare for the viva – and necessary your focus doesn’t skew towards pre-empting particular questions. Don’t prepare only for questions you want, questions you expect or questions that you simply have a hunch about.
Prepare for the discussion by engaging in discussion. A mock viva could help set the tone and help you to find the balance between expecting topics and being prepared for questions that arise from what you’ve done.
A PhD journey is bounded in many ways.
You can only read a finite number of papers and articles to build up your knowledge.
There’s a cap on the number of words that a thesis can reasonably contain.
You have only so many productive hours in any working day and pushing beyond that will not bring greater progress.
And you have hundreds of days to do the work but those days will eventually come to an end – and then you’ll have weeks to prepare for your viva.
Consider your limits as you start to get ready for submission and your viva. What do they show you?
Perhaps there were other things you could have done, but if you’re a typical PhD candidate those limits will show that you are knowledgeable. You embraced your work and studied. The limits of your PhD journey will demonstrate that you worked hard enough to get things done. You’ll have a thesis with thousands and thousands of words as proof that you stayed determined.
There are limits that come in many forms, but none detract from the picture presented of you and your work. You did something. You made something that wasn’t there before and you can be proud of what you’ve made.
After submission it’s likely that your thesis will have flaws. It’s possible that your thesis may have problems too. Both of these have the potential to be talked about in the viva and have consequences for corrections afterwards.
Flaws are simple. A flaw is relatively simple to spot through careful reading and obvious with hindsight. It’s the spelling mistake that gets overlooked and corrected, or an alteration to a diagram or table that provides clarity. You might find it or your examiners might; a flaw could be frustrating but it’s not a challenge to fix.
Problems are complicated. A problem might not be obvious at first glance. A problem could need exploring or explaining; it could have a simple solution after conversation removes confusion. The biggest contrast with a flaw is that a flaw is definite: something needs to be changed. That might not be the case with a problem. A problem could exist in the mind of a candidate or examiner – something has been read and interpreted one way when the truth is something different.
Flaws are found and fixed simply. Problems are perceived and pondered on carefully.
Neither flaws nor problems should get in the way of success at the viva. Read your thesis carefully in preparation, make notes if you need to, then be ready to talk in your viva about the amazing work you’ve done, as well as the flaws and problems that need addressing in some way.
Remember that thesis defence doesn’t mean that you need to protect your work from harm.
Remember you’re not in a courtroom with your thesis on the witness stand.
Defending your thesis means you are tasked with speaking up for a silent book.
The words are all there, but maybe they’re not all clear. The pages are packed but there could be more to say. You have every chapter you need, but your examiners might want to know a little more or talk a little more about the fascinating things you’ve laid out.
In the viva, your task is to continue to support the work you’ve done for a long time. Defending your thesis means supporting the ideas you’ve developed and saying more about why they’re valuable.
Your examiners are looking for a significant, original contribution in your thesis and a conversation with the capable researcher who did the work. For you to meet their expectations you don’t need to have super-researcher powers…
This doesn’t need to be you. It can’t be anyone. There isn’t a researcher in the world who can meet the impossible standards that worry might set. Your examiners don’t need a hero in the viva: they need a human, capable and dedicated researcher.
They’re looking for you.
Your examiners will ask you questions. They have to: it’s an essential part of the viva process. They will share opinions or make statements to encourage you to make a response but they couldn’t get through your viva without asking a question.
Engaging with a question could be as simple as pausing to consider what was asked, thinking about what you’re going to say and then respond as clearly as you can. If a question was surprising or had an unexpected element you might want to reflect further:
It would be wrong to expect every question in a viva to be mind-meltingly almost-impossible. They won’t be.
It’s right to remember that if you encounter a tough question that there is a lot you can do to engage and respond.