Viva next week - nerves setting in

[bathsh3ba]

After 3.5 years of a PhD in Politics, my viva is next week and now the nerves are kicking in. It's not helped by news of the rail strikes next week which could affect both my external travelling and my boyfriend making it over to support me. My supervisor is also now on leave till a day or two before the viva so I'm feeling a bit bereft of support!

My supervisor thinks my thesis is ready, she says there is always a risk but she is reasonably confident I'll come away with minor corrections. But imposter syndrome is creeping in again and I'm very conscious my PhD is niche and interdisciplinary and it's not my supervisor's primary area of expertise (no one near me has the expertise) so that makes me nervous I've missed something.

Any advice for keeping the nerves at bay?

you know your work. you are the world expert in your topic and no one else in the world knows it in the level of depth that you do.

your examiners are smart interested people who want to hear about your work. so the viva will probably be an academic discussion where you get to share your ideas. It is not an interrogation.

the typical opening questions are

• give me a 5 min summary of your PhD


• what did you like / enjoy / feel most proud of in the thesis?

have answers ready for those and the rest will go smoothly.

also, you don't have to know the answer to everything. If they say 'and why didn't you reference Smith and Jones 1953', you say 'great idea, I'll include that in the corrections' and then you smile and move on. Don't say 'Smith & Jones aren't relevant' and don't pretend to know who they are if you've never heard of them. just accept the comment and move on.

Thank you @parietal, the second bit of advice in particular I've not heard before and is very useful.

Mine is next week too!! I feel absolutely terrified to be honest. I had a quick sound check today with my examiners (we’ll be on Teams) and they smiled a lot which helped put me at ease but I was utterly petrified beforehand and my legs were shaking under the desk…. I’ll keep my fingers and toes crossed for you.

How did it go @bathsh3ba Fingers crossed for you!

It's been pushed back to next week to allow the external examiner to travel with the train strikes...

Remember tha your performance at the viva is much more likely to work in your favour than against. I've been at vivas where we've told the candidate at the beginning "not to worry, it's ok, just enjoy the discussion with us" - we had a very strong sense that the thesis was going to pass with minor corrections (no corrections at all is very rare in my field) and this was very unlikely to change after the viva, unless it was revealed that the candidate wasn't the author of the thesis or something extreme like this. On the contrary, if your examiners are between minor and major corrections, the viva can steer them in favour of the former.

@bathsh3ba

I’m not sure if that is a good or bad thing but I hope it’s positive.

Just an update to say I passed with minor corrections! Both examiners were lovely, they did give me a good grilling but they did it kindly. I have 12 weeks to make the corrections.

Excellent advice. Also think about the most challenging part of your thesis/research. Would you approach it the same way if you had your time again.

Yay! Well done you!! I’m so pleased for you. Enjoy the moment Dr bathsh3ba

Well done op! Not sure why your update didn’t show before I posted

Well done! So pleased for you.