Have you got your PhD viva coming up soon? Or is it something that you're already starting to dread even though it's a few years away? If so, this is the perfect episode for you. We're going to be thinking about all the stories about PhD vivas, how we can prepare for them, and how we can look after ourselves in that process. You get to decide how we do this and I'm going to help you figure out how.
Hello and welcome to episode eight of season two of the PhD Life Coach and this week we are talking preparing your viva. Now this is a topic that's at the top of my mind at the moment because in my membership program at the University of Birmingham where students have access to two sessions a week of online group coaching, I've got several students who have either got their vivas imminently or who've got them coming up in the next month or two.
Been coaching on this a lot recently and really getting an insight into the thoughts and feelings that people experience in this period. I want to contextualize first of all that this does depend to some extent on what country you're doing your PhD in. There's very different structures for vivas or defences in different countries. In some countries, some parts of mainland Europe, for example, you've essentially passed your PhD before you go into your defence and it's more of a public display, you do a talk and answer some questions, but the idea is to share and celebrate.
Now I'm not saying that's not stressful, there may be other thoughts around that, but in the UK, the viva is the point at which your examiners really decide whether they're going to give you the PhD or not, and how many changes they're going to ask you to do in order to pass. You can, of course, get an outright fail. It's highly unusual to get that in your first viva. But what this means is it feels like a really high stakes assessment, and it's something that is different than people have done before. It's something that you've been working towards for three to four years, often even more if you're a part time student, for example, or who've taken leave of absences.
And so it can feel like this massive, massive thing. And if you're feeling that at the moment, that's really understandable. There is nothing wrong with you. I did a little shout out on my social media and also within my membership. So within my membership, we have a Slack channel where we can all talk to each other and there were so many thoughts that people were having about their PhD viva. They were worried they were going to get defensive when they were criticized. They were worried that maybe the process wouldn't be fair because different people have different examiners. They were concerned that they didn't know what they should be doing in this gap between handing in and doing the viva and that they might do the wrong things. They're worried they're not good enough, that they'll say something stupid.
They talked about a rollercoaster of emotions, going from sort of the elation of handing in their PhD, through to feeling really anxious about the viva itself, and also a sense of loss that they were finishing this period of their life. This thing they'd looked forward to finishing, suddenly feels like a gap in their life now it's not there anymore.
And then people have these perceptions of what the viva is going to be like as well. We all hear disaster stories of when it went on for eight hours and the person got major mods anyway, and all of these things. We hear all the big stories and we worry that it's going to be terrible. I've had clients talk about dread, that they actively are dreading their viva.
There's also all these thoughts around whether the people around you have done enough, should your supervisor have supported you more, should your thesis be in a better place than it was by the time it got handed in because you didn't get the support that you needed, about whether you've even got the right examiners, whether you should have had more input into who those examiners were, whether your supervisors have picked the right people. There's so many thoughts and so many stories.
We have people who get really worried that they won't remember things, that, you know, they, they understand their work, but they don't necessarily trust that they'll be able to recall details and they believe they're going to really need to do that in the Viva.
And then we have people who worry about the emotions they'll experience. They worry now that they'll get really anxious in the viva. Maybe they're worried they'll panic in the viva. Maybe they're worried they just won't say anything because they'll go into like a freeze stress response.
All of these things are very, very normal, but as usual, they don't have to be inevitable, it doesn't have to feel like this. The problems don't come when we have these thoughts and feelings, the problems come when we unquestioningly accept them, take them as truth and believe we have to just fight or experience all these emotions.
And what we're gonna think about today is some alternative ways that you can think about this period of time so that you can decide what you need to spend it doing. Because depending on what you're feeling, and depending on what your thoughts are, and depending on your beliefs about your thesis, there are very different ways that you can spend this time.
There is no right answer. You get to decide what works for you. But let's figure out how we can decide that in a way that's really got your best interests at heart rather than a sense that you "should" be doing something in particular.
As usual, I'm going to finish with some tips from me based on my experience as an examiner, a chair in PhD vivas, and as a supervisor of a bunch of PhD students who have got successfully through their vivas. So let's get started.
First, I'd really recommend you figure out where you are at. And by you, I don't mean your thesis. I don't mean looking through and figuring out what you did well and what you did badly and how you're going to defend it in the Viva. I mean you. How are you at the moment? What are the feelings you're experiencing?
What are the thoughts you're having? Let's try and identify those before we do anything else because what we need to prepare more than anything for the Viva is to prepare you. We've talked about thought downloads in these podcasts before. Take a moment to really write about how you're thinking about the viva at the moment. Just keep writing. Don't judge anything you're writing. Try and get really get into what thoughts you're having and what emotions you're experiencing and do it from a place of compassion. All of this is completely normal. You are not feeling anything that other people aren't feeling. Let's figure it out because different people do worry about different elements of this. It is all completely normal, but you'll find you've got particular things that you're worrying about.
I want you to also think about how you're feeling right now. Are you tired? You're probably tired. It's understandable to be tired. You've just done this massive push to get your thesis written. And there's a real comedown from that. You have this sort of elation of handing in, and then it's this sort of, and your body gets to relax for the first time in probably a long time, and that can feel really weird.
So how are you feeling right now? Spend a little bit of time writing about that. And what I want you then to think about is not how do I prepare for this terrifying vibe, or what do I even need to do? Because then we spin off into these big stories. But instead I want you to ask yourself, what do you need right now?
Now, some of this will be, what do I need practically there in the defence? So, I need a printed copy of my thesis perhaps, that might be one thing that you think you actually need. You might need, in your mind, to refresh your memory of some of the key references, for example.
So you may have some things like that, where it's actual topic based needs that you identify. However, I really want you to focus more on you as a human being. What do you need?
And for a lot of you, What you need is some rest. And I know the immediate thought that's jumping into your head is I don't have time to rest, I've got to get ready for my viva. But trust me, the periods of your life where you don't have time to rest are the periods that you need rest more than ever.
Another thing you might really want now is some clarity. You might want to really understand what you're going to be doing over this period of time. That's totally understandable. Whilst a PhD can feel really unstructured while you're doing it, at least you know usually what the next steps of your research are and what your next tasks are. This period of time between handing in and the defense can feel even more unstructured, than the beginnings of our PhDs feel.
And so if you're feeling like you want some clarity, that's really understandable too. Write that down on your list. So you probably want some rest. You probably want some clarity. You probably are saying, and I'm now guessing the things that you're going to thought download, you probably also want to feel secure.
You want to feel like you understand what's going to happen and that you're going to be okay. Some confidence that you're going to be okay. And then what we can do is, as we start to figure out what do I need right now, we can then start to think, okay, how can I meet those needs? What would help those things, and from there, we can really action plan.
So if you need rest, we can think about how much rest, what feels like good rest for you, because all rest is not created equal. Rest where you're blobbing on the sofa, scrolling on your phone and three hours later, just feel a bit groggy, is not the same as rest where you go for a short walk and then actually nap. You know what type of rest feels restful for you, and what type of rest makes you just feel worse than when you started. We can plan for what sort of rest will help us most.
And then we can think, what am I going to need to think in order to be willing to rest? Because we can action plan all we want, but if we don't look at the thoughts we have about it, then we ain't going to do the things that we intended to do.
So what thoughts would you need to think in order to be able to follow your rest plan? You probably need to think that rest is important. You probably need to think that you have enough time to rest. You probably need to think that you deserve. to rest. And I want you to really ask yourself whether you believe those things, because if you don't, you're not going to rest with all the best intentions.
So we either need to work on building your belief in those thoughts, or you need to work on identifying thoughts that you do have, that you do already believe. Maybe you already believe that people generally deserve to rest before their viva. There are very few of you, I think, who would tell your friends that they didn't deserve to rest before their vivas, having just handed in their thesis, but somehow we tell it to ourselves. So find a thought that feels true for you, that enables you to actually get that rest that you want. One of my students also let me know that she'd been listening to one of my earlier podcasts, episode 11, I think it is, on how to rest over the Christmas holidays from last year, and was finding that really useful in this period of time before her viva. So if you're feeling like you need to rest, but you have a lot of thoughts about whether you deserve to rest, whether you've got time to rest, that would be a really good episode to check out.
In terms of clarity, if you feel like you need clarity, what do you need to think in order to get that clarity? And I think this is a combination of thoughts. I think you need to think that it's possible to have some clarity. You need to believe that that is something that you can have. A lot of people see the viva as this big mysterious thing that I can never have clarity about until, because you never know what might happen when you go in there. That's kind of true, but you can get a bunch of clarity about it. So you need to believe that it's possible to be more clear on how it's going to go.
You need to believe it's okay to ask questions. So to talk to people from your department who've had vivas recently, talk to people who've examined vivas in your department recently, examined them elsewhere, talking to your supervisor about previous experiences with their students, you need to believe that it's okay to ask those questions.
Everyone does their viva for the first time. Everybody has been in the position where they didn't know and sometimes supervisors forget what things we don't know, you know, it's really easy once you've done it, however many times, you know, I got to the stage where I would forget some of the basic things that people doing this for the first time didn't understand. So let's nurture the belief that it's okay to ask for clarity.
The other thing that I think is really important though for you to think is that you get to decide some of the clarity. There isn't a right way of preparing. If our result is that we have a clear plan for the period between now and the viva, and that's what we want to end up with. And the actions we need to take are to work out what we're going to do in that time. What thoughts help with that? One thought that helps. is I get to decide. Other people have done vivas before, but only I have done this viva before.
Only I have had my PhD experience and having this viva experience and I know what I need in this period and I get to decide. And often, that's a really challenging thought. Because we believe there's a right answer out there somewhere, that if only we could find it, we'd know how to prepare.When in reality, like with so many things, you just get to pick. You get to pick and you know yourself as well as anybody, so there's no one better qualified to pick what you need right now.
Another thing that you might have identified that you need is confidence, belief, that sense that you are going to be okay. Now, this is a really interesting one because people think that confidence comes from having done things before and confidence comes from knowing that you are going to pass the viva.
, The trouble is, you haven't done this before, and we don't know if you're going to pass the viva. Now most people, when you hand in your thesis, it's very unusual for you to fail on a viva. It's very unusual for it to be anything other than some degree of modifications, and then here's your PhD.
However, you don't know. We don't know. We can't be sure. And the trouble is, people try and reassure us by saying, you know, you'll be okay. It's like, what if I'm not? I might not be. Something might go wrong. I might end up with some horrible examiner who's feeling really unreasonable, and they find something in my thesis that I didn't know about. It might happen. And so trying to get confidence from saying it's not going to can be a bit of a losing battle. What I would really encourage you instead is to build confidence from knowing that you will be okay, whatever happens. From knowing that in that viva, you are going to look after yourself and that after the viva, no matter what happens, you are going to be kind to yourself and you are going to put the support in place that you need to be okay.
I once, and I can't remember if I ever talked about this on the podcast before, I once took part in a competition called FameLab, where it's a science communication competition. I was on stage at the Bloomsbury Theatre and I forgot all my words. I hadn't anticipated it happening. I wasn't even that nervous about it, to be honest. But I completely forgot my words and just froze on stage in front of hundreds of people, and streaming live on the internet. It was a joy. I think I might have mentioned this before. But anyway, what made that okay wasn't that I stopped something awful happening, because something awful did happen.
It was pretty embarrassing. But what made it okay was that I was really kind to myself afterwards. I didn't beat myself up about how I'd made a fool of myself. I didn't tell myself terrible things about myself. I didn't beat myself up about how much more rehearsal I should have done or any of those things.
I just said, well, that sucked. How can I look after you? And I was nice to myself. I actually ended up making a video about the experience. You can find that on YouTube if you look. And you can do the same. Whatever happens in your viva, you can choose to be really nice about yourself and to remind yourself that you did your best here and that you worked really hard for this. And that whatever happens, you're going to keep being kind to yourself, you're not going to say terrible things to yourself, and you're going to sort out whatever you need to sort out after the viva, whether that's minor typos for your minor modifications, or whether it's a bigger piece of work that you still need to complete. We can decide in advance that we're going to be nice to ourselves throughout the whole process.
So far, we've really been thinking about what do you need in this period between handing in and going to the viva. So what do you need over this preparation period? What I want you to also spend some time thinking is what do I need on the day? How do I want to feel? What do I need to set up in advance so that I can feel those things? And one thing I would really encourage you to do is to plan in advance what you're going to think on the day. And again, we've, we've talked about to think lists before, and they could sometimes be a bit of a weird concept for people because obviously action is useful.
We know that. We know we have to actually do things to get anything done. But pre planning what you're going to think on the day can be really, really helpful. Having a little sentence that resonates with you that you go back to when you feel anxious is really helpful. I will chuck some in for you.
I know this work better than anybody else and I guarantee you that's true. Your examiners might know some of the background better than you do, or at least as well as you do. But your work, you know better than anybody else.
Another thought that I would recommend, it doesn't have to be perfect. Which is true. Often people have this feeling that if there's anything they don't know in the viva, then they're gonna get major modifications and it's gonna be horrendous and it's gonna take another year and blah, blah, blah. It's not true. You are allowed to have bits in the viva where you just don't know the answer. You are allowed to have bits in the viva where you say. Yeah, I can't actually remember why we did that. I mean, this would be logical, I guess, but I can't really remember. That's okay. You're allowed bits where you are not perfect. In fact, one of the roles of a viva is for them to be able to see that you know, your work has some flaws. You understand the flaws, and you understand how you could maybe mitigate them in the future or why they were kind of inevitable with the design that you used and therefore just what the implications of those flaws are.
They're not looking for a perfect piece of work. They're looking for a piece of work where you understand its strengths and why you did it that way and you understand its flaws and you can explain them and discuss them in the context of other work. So a thought, this doesn't have to be perfect, can be really useful.
This is a conversation, not a defence, can be a helpful one too. And in an awful lot of viva experiences that I've overseen during my academic career, people have come out going, that was actually really nice, who knew? And it's like, hmm, tried to tell you that, you didn't believe me. But it's okay, because I didn't believe people before mine either.
But reminding yourself this is a conversation. I get to have a conversation with two people who care about this field, about my work. That's pretty cool. Okay, so you get to think whatever you want in the run up to that viva, in that day of the viva, but let's decide it in advance.
If you're really worried that you're going to get stressed, you can take two approaches. You can have one where you have thoughts that help you to be less stressed. So those kind of calming, it doesn't have to be perfect. This is just a conversation. I know my work better than anybody. You can have those calming thoughts that we've talked about, but I'd also recommend a thought.
It's okay if I get stressed because I can just take a moment. Okay. Sometimes we get more stressed worrying that we're going to get stressed and it will be a big deal than we would actually if we just got stressed in the moment.
So reminding yourself, if I get stressed in the viva, I can just take a second and breathe. I can also just ask for a couple of moments. That's okay too. You can in the viva say, can I just have a couple of seconds? I'm feeling a bit nervous. And your examiners will understand that. Vivas aren't about testing how you respond under pressure. This is not Celebrity SAS. Okay, they're not there to torture you.
If you say, can I just take a moment, then that will be okay. If you feel really uncomfortable with that, you can always ask to go to the toilet. That's a sneaky way to go and get yourself a moment without having to tell them that you need a moment. So if partway through you're feeling, you know, you can feel your heart rate going, you're getting a bit sweaty and you're a bit like, okay, and you're really uncomfortable to say, can I just take a moment, ask for a bathroom break because that's acceptable too.
So we get to decide what we want to be thinking and feeling in the run up to it, we get to decide what we want to be thinking and feeling on the day of, and we get to decide what we're going to say to ourselves after it. And I'd be really cautious around your interpretation of the words, I did my best.
Because people often have this notion of what your best is, which would be answering every question eloquently and quickly and thoroughly and blah blah blah, having no critiques. That's not your best. Your best is whatever you do on the day. Because your best is what you're capable of doing in that moment.
So even if you get a bit stressed and even if afterwards you think, Oh, I should have mentioned that paper. Oh my God, I'm so annoyed. Whatever you did, that was your best. And you get to decide that after this, I am telling myself I did my best, no matter what happens in that viva. I'm telling myself I'm proud of myself, no matter what happens in that viva. Okay, you get to decide that now.
So we can think in this time, what do I need now? What do I need on the day? What do I need afterwards? And start to plan thoughts and actions that help with those things. I think this is also a really important moment to start talking about something that in my form of coaching we call the manual, which is our expectations of others.
And it's really easy, particularly when we're under stress ourselves, to have expectations about how other people should be behaving. So how much support our supervisors should be giving us, how our examiners should behave on the day, how our family and friends and partners should be supporting us in the run up to our viva.
There's no issue with having expectations of other people. We all have expectations of other people. We all have hopes as to how people will behave. In some situations, you may be able to request things you want from those people. So if sitting down and doing a mock viva with your supervisor would be useful, ask. If your partner bringing you hot drinks while you look through your thesis and make some notes would be useful and just make you feel looked after, ask. You can make requests of other people, but the reason we call it a manual is because ultimately, our manual, for other people, they don't have to follow it.
Unfortunately, every individual in this world gets to decide what they're going to do. And that's driven by a whole bunch of things, and sometimes that can be really annoying. Because sometimes you might look at your supervisor and think, you should be supporting me differently right now. Or thinking to the examiner, you're being really mean and you shouldn't be. Or thinking to your family, you should understand how stressed I am and you don't. What we teach about the manual is the more you can accept that other people will behave the way they behave and that we get to choose how we respond to that, the easier it gets. Because there's nothing more painful than spending loads of time wishing somebody was anything other than they were.
We talked about this a little bit in some of my episodes about getting on with your supervisor and having a good supervisory relationship. So if in the run up to your viva you're still struggling with that, those could be some useful episodes to do.
So really think about what are your expectations for the people around you? What requests are you willing to make to them? But what are you also just going to accept? Because you can make requests, but people are not going to start being people they're not. If your supervisor is not the warm, fuzzy type, they're not suddenly going to start checking on you every day to make sure you're OK and patting you on the head and telling you you're brilliant.
So when you can accept that, we can think how else to meet those needs. Because that's essentially what we're doing with a manual, is we're expecting other people to meet our needs. And it's not that they shouldn't, maybe they could, maybe they should. But if they're not going to, how can we meet those needs ourselves?
If your supervisor's not the warm fuzzy type who will pat you on the head and tell you you're brilliant and you want to be patted on the head and told you're brilliant, who would? How could you pat yourself on the head and tell yourself you're brilliant?
So figure out why do I want these things from people? Why do I want my family to understand how stressful this is? Because I need validation that it's okay that I'm stressed? Cool, where can you get that from? You can get that from other people who've been through it. You can get that from yourself. Yourself is always a good source of these things. The less time we can spend wishing other people were different, the more time we can spend actually meeting our needs so that we're supported during this period.
Another technique I want to introduce you to is conscious self talk. And I talked about this in one of my favorite episodes that, in my opinion, has not had enough attention. So I think you should all go and listen to it and it's about why Winnie the Pooh can help you manage your mind. And I encourage you to go and listen to the entire episode 'cause it's wonderful and I love it and I use it all the time.
But in brief, what I talk about in that episode is that if you are hearing your brain saying to you lots of things that are perhaps not helping. You know, your brain saying, oh, I don't think you're good enough. You don't know how to prepare, you know, you should have done more by now and all of those sorts of things that we know don't help us. You get to assign them a Winnie the Pooh character, assign those voices a Winnie the Pooh character. And the reason we give it a character is because then we get to talk back to the character, but in a compassionate way. Because the thing with Winnie the Pooh, we love all of these characters, okay? They're all awesome. They're lovely, cute characters. They all have your best interests at heart. Owl just values cleverness and wants you to be amazing. Eeyore, he wants to be happier than he is, but he really struggles and he's a lovely little donkey, he just gets a bit down sometimes. And Winnie the Pooh just worries that you don't get enough rest and you don't give yourself more treats and so he tries to remind you that you do deserve that.
And so we don't get to just go, okay, I'll do what Winnie the Pooh says. Okay, you must be right. We get to talk back to them, but we get to do it in a compassionate way because we like these characters.
So we get to say to Eeyore, I know it does feel like that sometimes, doesn't it? But actually, we've done some quite hard things. We actually, we finished our thesis when we didn't think we would. You know, you get to talk back and reassure Eeyore.
Or if Winnie the Pooh is saying, Come on, you deserve to sit on the sofa and eat chocolate, then you can go, I know I do. I really do. But when we planned today, we decided that we were going to do two hours of preparation work first, and then we'd sit on the sofa. So I am going to sit with you, but not till later. So you get to respond back to these voices and reassure them that you're on this. You have a plan.
So you really get to think about what you need right now and how you can meet those needs, either yourself or by making requests from the people around you. You get to decide what you need to think and feel at the moment, what you need to think and feel in the viva itself and on that day, and what you need to think and feel after the viva in order to be able to take all the actions that you want to take and achieve the results that you want to achieve.
I know that's a lot of thought work, and I know a lot of that isn't the kind of concrete advice of this is what you need to do to prepare. And that's because all of you are different. You don't need the same things. And it's really important that you channel into what you need, and you then make the plans as to how you can do that and that's why I've focused on that so far.
However. I know you all love a tip, so I'm also going to give you some tips. Things that I would really recommend. Schedule your rest, schedule your work time. I talk about this in the how to rest episode. So, decide in advance, at least a day in advance, usually a week in advance.
When you are going to do different things so that you aren't resting while thinking you should be working and working when you think you should be resting and actually not really achieving either. Okay, so try to schedule that stuff out so that you know when you're doing the different things.
I would highly recommend having a copy of your thesis that you will be taking into the viva with you, whatever format you decide to do your viva in, whether it's face to face or online and consider putting tabs down the side if it's a physical copy, so that you can really quickly flick to the right page.
There's nothing worse than somebody saying, you know, oh, figure one of chapter two, um, I noticed that, blah, blah, blah, and you're thinking, which one's that? Get it so that you can just put tabs in and really quickly find them there in the moment. It can really help you not feel so flustered because you're not kind of doing flustered actions looking for the pages.
Another tip is, and this is kind of getting back into thought work, bit is remember that your circumstances don't dictate your feelings. So some people get very worried about
whether their viva's online or whether it's in a room, and if they have the choice which they should choose or if it's been imposed on them, whether that's a good thing or not. Your circumstances do not create your feelings. The thoughts that you have about them do. So just decide, or just accept what you've been given, and think the thoughts that this is the best decision ever.
So if your viva is going to be online, or you decide you want it to be online, tell yourself all the reasons why that's the best thing you've ever done in your life. Why that's going to be so much better. If it's going to be in a room, tell yourself all the reasons why that's the best thing. The circumstances don't dictate it. Who your examiner is does not dictate how you feel. It's the thoughts you have about that person. You could have a super experienced examiner and your thoughts could be, Oh my goodness, they're so amazing. , This is terrifying and just feel terrified. Or you could have this super experienced examiner and tell yourself, they're really going to see the big picture and I'm so lucky to have two hours of their time where they get to experience my work and I can chat with them about it. I'm going to learn so much. And you could feel excited or prepared or those sorts of things.
So remember, circumstance doesn't drive your feelings. The thoughts that you choose to nurture, not just the ones that pop up, but the ones you choose to nurture, dictate how you're going to feel.
Another tip, identify the flaws in your thesis that you can see now and be able to explain why you made those decisions and how you mitigated the flaws and what you might do differently in the future. One of the things, when we can be calm about preparing for a viva and accept that it's okay that there are flaws in our work, then we can actually start to be able to talk about them like academics.
It's when we feel defensive about our work that we don't want people to find the flaws and what if they spot flaws and there shouldn't be any, that actually we end up not preparing for those questions. So spend a bit of time identifying what are the flaws. How could I have done this differently? Why didn't I? And what would I do differently next time? Okay, that's perfectly fine.
Find the lists of questions online. If you go online and search common viva questions, there's hundreds. Pick 10 and try and jot down a few notes for those. It's not a case of memorizing, but just sort of getting stuff into your mind of the sorts of things that people are likely to ask.
Things that always came up in the ones that I was involved with, was, you know, why did you pick this 10? topic. Why these methods? So the sort of why questions, um, what does your research contribute? What is unique about your work? Those sorts of things. , If you were going to do a postdoc in this topic, what would your next experiment be or your next study be? Those sorts of things.
So. Google. Google is your friend. Search for some of these questions, pick a few, and try and plan a few answers to them. You don't have to memorize these. Especially if you're going to be online, please don't have post it notes of all the right answers to everything all around you. It will freak you out. But do pre think some of these questions and remember that there will always be some questions that come completely out of the blue.
Another tip, people get really worried about remembering authors and dates of research that you've read. As long as you can show that you know the research, you don't have to know the details. I don't remember the dates of my own papers, for goodness sake. There may be some people that can suddenly remember all this, but this isn't a memory game. This is an understanding game. So as long as you can say there was some really interesting research done where they did blah blah blah blah. In my opinion at least, supervisors let me know whether you disagree with me or not, but in my opinion at least and certainly when I did investigations about this in my old university, the vast majority of staff don't care whether you can say, Oh, this is from 2011 or whatever. Focus on understanding rather than memorization.
My final tip. Is remember, as with all things in life, you hear the stories of the dramatic ones. So you hear about the people who went through with no changes and, oh my goodness, could I do that? And you hear about the ones where it was a huge long viva and the person was awful and they asked questions that weren't even fair and so on so forth.
You don't hear about the vast majority of vivas that are absolutely bog standard. They go through, they have a nice conversation, they have a few bits that are somewhat uncomfortable because the examiners ask something that they're not quite clear on. They tidy up, they move on to something else, they talk it through. It takes two to three hours, something like that, might vary a bit between disciplines. And then you come out with minor modifications. That's the vast majority, and you never hear those stories because they're just bog standard and boring. And so it can really create this impression that either you're going to soar and you're under pressure to get no changes, or you're going to crash and burn and it's going to be terrible, because they're the stories you hear.
My final final tip... is really remind yourself that once this is done, it just doesn't matter anymore. I was an academic for 20 years. I've worked with hundreds, if not thousands of academics in various capacities, you know, collaborators, co teaching modules, committees, leadership, all sorts of things.
I have no idea how long they took to do their PhDs. I have no idea whether they got minor modifications or major modifications, whether the examiner said something mean to them or not. No idea. No idea. Because they got their PhDs and they did their thing.
If you actually ask people, there's a huge variety, but it doesn't matter. And that's within academia, where people know what that means. Outside of academia, people haven't got a clue. Once you've got it, you've got it. So reminding yourself that the stuff that feels incredibly important now, won't be in a few years time. You'll have done this thing, and that's amazing.
That's not to underestimate how tough it is in the moment, but keeping that perspective. Do you know how long your supervisor took? I bet you don't. Keeping that perspective can really help. I think back through my cohort, so the people that graduated around the same time as me. And firstly, I can't really remember many people's PhD experiences, but I also know that it really didn't dictate their careers either. You know, there are people who I have vague recollections of flying through their vivas who are doing fine now, other people who had a real struggle, who are now absolutely amazing sector leaders in their area and so on. It really doesn't matter in the long run.
The important thing is it's another opportunity to learn to look after you while you do something challenging and important. So think about what you need and figure out how to meet those needs between now and then. And I look forward to hearing all of your success stories in due course.
Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next week.