Daily viva help for PhDs
If you hear five viva stories from different people you will spot common threads and notice differences.
If you hear five viva stories from people in your department you will notice examination practices and understand why they are different.
Every viva is different.
Every viva is influenced by regulations, expectations and departmental practices.
You viva will be similar to others, but can’t be the same.
Your examiners will have a lot of questions for you at your viva, along with various comments they will make.
You won’t know them in advance. You can get a sense of what to expect by consulting resources, talking with your supervisors and reflecting on your research. Anything you are asked is purely to help drive the discussion forward and create a space where your examiners can explore you and your work.
All of this could make someone feel intimidated but here’s the important thing to remember: you only have to respond to one question or comment at a time. Your examiners don’t serve you twenty questions to start the viva and expect you to keep track of them all. You aren’t given a sheet of comments to work through.
One at a time, point by point, you respond to what your examiners need so that they can confidently say you are good enough.
A week before submission you find that a section in your thesis is missing something important. What do you do?
Two weeks before your viva you learn that one of your examiners is cancelling. What do you do?
The day before your viva you find a big mistake in your thesis – you know what the correction is but you can’t change it now. What do you do?
Thirty minutes into your viva you are shaken by a question you’ve never considered before. What do you do?
These situations aren’t equivalent to each other. Impact and context matters. In some cases you can ask for help directly: for example, if your examiner cancelled that could be very stressful but it wouldn’t be your situation to resolve alone.
More than anything for any sudden problems the best advice I could offer is to stop: pause and breathe and get past any panic.
What can you do? Before you decide what you will do, think about what your options might be. Can you ask for help from someone? Have you faced a situation like this before? As stressful as it might immediately feel what is the real impact?
What can you do – then what will you do?
You have to do something but you don’t have to do the first thing that comes to mind when you’re experiencing the stress of a sudden problem. Pause and breathe then consider your options.
You don’t get to choose or refuse questions. You don’t decide how long your viva will be. You can’t arrange the tables just so. You don’t technically get to choose your examiners.
You can’t dismiss a rule or regulation that sounds unfair. You can’t say no to corrections. You can’t change the scope or the process. You can’t decide when it’s over.
All of the above are true, but what do they matter?
You can succeed like most candidates do.
You can do the work before and during the viva. You can show up ready. You can focus on the expectations that make a difference and leave aside all of the above.
You can have everything that does matter by checking a few things out, asking the right questions and preparing. Do what you need to and you can have it all at the viva.
Around submission time, if not before, look for someone who can help you if something goes wrong. You’re probably looking for someone at your doctoral college or graduate school, or possibly even your departmental or faculty director of postgraduate studies.
You want the name and contact details of who to turn to in case:
Get the details of an emergency contact just in case. You might not need them. I hope you won’t. But you will be glad you have them if something goes wrong.
After submission there’s a lot of waiting. It’s a good idea to be ready for it.
Get ready to wait when you submit your thesis!
Or rather, make sure you have a good sense of the viva process – both before, during and after – so that you know when you’ll need to wait and perhaps how long some of those waits will be.
PS: want to dig into the viva process more? Take a look at Viva Survivor, my upcoming live webinar on Wednesday 25th June. I’ll be talking about expectations, viva prep, examiners and a lot more, as well as responding to questions from everyone present. Viva Survivor is a 3-hour live webinar and all attendees get access to a catch-up recording and follow-up materials. Please check out the details and see if it might help you or someone you know. Thanks for reading.
One approach to engaging in the viva could be summarised as pause, think, respond.
Another way to look at this is to see that all three points are linked. You pause to think, taking time to be sure of what you need to say. You think to respond well, being reflective and careful.
Pause, think, respond. Pause to think, think to respond. Whichever way resonates, the connection is that a candidate engages well at the viva when they take their time.
It doesn’t need to be a hard question for you to take a few moments to consider what you will say or how you will say it.
…but you don’t need perfect to succeed in your PhD or at the viva.
None of these are trivial but none of them requires perfection.
You don’t need perfection to pass your viva.
It’s not the end of your journey or the end of the work.
As your viva concludes take a moment to reflect and think if there’s anything else you want to ask your examiners. Are there any questions you can imagine asking now?
Before the very end of the viva there is often a break where examiners confer. You could sit or pace nervously – or decide in advance that you’ll get some fresh air, refill your water bottle or quickly journal anything that’s occurred to you. What will you do in that break?
As you find out the result of the viva it’s very likely that you’ll be asked to complete minor corrections. While you might not know these now you can learn how long that corrections period. You can plan ahead for how you might do that work.
The end of the viva is not the end of your journey or the end of the work – but you’ll be really close to being done.
PS: want to explore what else you need to do to be done? Check out Viva Survivor, my upcoming live webinar on Wednesday 25th June. I’ve shared this session more than 400 times with PhD candidates all around the UK, but this is only the third time I’ve opened up registration. A 3-hour live webinar, catch-up recording and follow-up materials all about the viva, viva prep and getting ready. Take a look at the details and see if it might help you or someone you know. Thanks for reading!
You can do a lot to write a good thesis. It’s still likely that you will miss some unintentional typos. You might not spot when a sentence gets really long without a break. And after submission you might change your mind about a particular phrasing or explanation.
Any corrections that your examiners request are simply that. Corrections. Amendments. Fixes. Requests for changes to make your thesis that little bit better.
They don’t think you didn’t care. They don’t believe you should have done more or better.
Writing is hard. Writing a book is very hard.
If during your preparations you spot something that needs correcting that’s fine. If your examiners tell you about some in the viva that’s fine. After the viva, get them done and move on.
Don’t be too concerned about corrections.