Should I push for an in-person viva?

[onlineviva]

Hi there,

To cut a long story short, it seems easier for my examiners to do my viva online. I always imagined it to be in person, and am nervous about expressing myself online. Should I push for it to be in person? I don't want to be annoying. Is there some advantage to it being online?

I had a similar dilemma. One of my supervisors strongly encouraged me to go for in person; not because he felt it would be easier but because the experience would be better, discussions fuller. In the end it was going to delay it by months as one of the examiners was US based and he wasn’t coming to the U.K. anytime soon. So I went for online in the interests of not dragging it out any longer, and even that was tricky to schedule.

Anyway I think being online made it less stressful, somehow less pressure on the ‘performance’. I did it from a meeting room in the office, my supervisors and colleagues were still able to celebrate with me afterwards which was nice, I’d recommend that rather than from home!

Up to you in the end and how much delay there’s likely to be (and how much that would matter to you) if you pushed for in person. Good luck either way, very nearly done 💪

It’s getting a lot harder to find external examiners, lots of academics are saying no to external examining at the moment. It’s very poorly paid for the work involved, so essentially relies on a system of good will. It may be that the external only agreed if it could be held online so they don’t have to travel.

how far is your external having to travel? if it is a flight, then it will probably have to be online. if they are nearby, I'd push harder.

does your university have a policy? ours has a policy that strongly favours in-person unless there is a good reason.