For many of us, the PhD viva is both a welcomed climatic culmination to a PhD journey and a nerve-wracking and anxiety-inducing experience all at once.
If you’re following me on Instagram, you would have seen that on 30th August 2023, I successfully defended my PhD thesis by viva.
As you know, I’m in the UK, and here, that’s how PhD theses are examined. You have an oral exam, which is the PhD viva.
Thankfully, mine was a huge success!
By the way, if you prefer to listen to this blog post as a 2-part podcast, feel free to use the player below.
This one for PART 1:
This one for PART 2:
My PhD viva is finally over!
I am just so overwhelmed with gratitude, joy, relief and just pure happiness that this phase of my journey is now over.
After waiting for all of the official processes to be completed, I finally finished my PhD! I was just so thrilled and super grateful for the opportunity that I posted a question on Instagram (in my stories), which was whether you wanted me to talk about the experience of my PhD viva and share any top tips.
As an overwhelming number of you said YES, that’s what I’m going to focus on in this blog post.
In this blog post, I’m going to talk a lot about the experience of my PhD viva and also share my top takeaways for those of you who may be approaching your PhD viva, or just thinking ahead, if you’re not at that stage of your PhD journey as yet.
So, if you are preparing to submit your thesis, I shared my raw reactions after I submitted my thesis back in May of 2023 in another post. In that post, I talked a lot about my journey to completing my thesis, how long it took me, and the feeling of finally submitting my thesis. So if you haven’t read that post, please be sure to check out that one.
For this post, we’ll focus more on the actual PhD viva.
First, I will talk about my preparation for my PhD viva. Secondly, I will share my experience of the actual PhD viva itself, and then how I felt afterwards. Then, I will bring everything together and summarise my top tips.
In this section, we’ll just focus on the actual preparation phase. Then I’ll talk about the actual PhD viva itself in the second half of the post.
From PhD thesis submission to PhD viva with kids
I submitted my thesis back in May of 2023, and that was a huge accomplishment, yes! But obviously, I knew that the PhD viva was the next big hurdle to tackle.
My thesis was very big. It was 100k words and with the appendices and everything, it was over 600 pages!
So it was huge!
Because of that, I knew that I needed to give myself time to prepare for my PhD viva well. I had to ensure that I was going into that PhD viva fully prepared and confident. So, at the beginning of August, I prepared a timetable for myself.
Obviously, the kids were going to be off school as it was the summer holidays.
So, as I mentioned in one of my Instagram posts, it was the juggle-struggle on steroids because I had to prepare for my PhD viva. The kids were off school on summer holidays. There was all the back-to-school shopping to do. There was all of that plus lots of laundry and lots of ironing.
When the kids are home, the house is usually a mess. So there’s that!
Yeah, there was just a lot to juggle.
Because of that, I knew that I needed to be very strategic about my preparation for my PhD viva. I also made some bold moves at the beginning of the summer, which I’ll talk about another time.
But I worked out that I wanted to give myself a whole month to prepare for my PhD viva. I know some people say that you can just prepare for the PhD viva a couple of days in advance. However, I gave myself an entire month because of the size of my thesis. Plus, I had to juggle home life as well with the kids at home on summer holidays, and I also wanted to do fun things with them. We went to Legoland and did lots of other fun activities. I didn’t want the summer to be just all about ‘Mummy preparing for her PhD viva’, especially with them being off school. I wanted them to still enjoy their summer holiday.
So, for these reasons, I gave myself an entire month!
Coming up with a PhD viva preparation plan with kids
So, at the beginning which was at the end of July, I worked out a schedule for August. Within that time, I allocated certain days in the week for complete PhD viva prep, where I could immerse myself in my reading and preparation for the PhD viva. I blocked out the weekends to spend with my family and do things with them.
My husband had some time off work towards the very end. So, that week before my PhD viva, he was off so that meant I could purely focus on that. And I thankfully didn’t have work to worry about during this time either. That helped! I was able to do what bits I could during the day and then still have time to spend with my family.
So, at the beginning of August, I wrote out a schedule and allocated certain dates for my PhD. That plan worked well. Obviously, on the days when my husband wasn’t at home and I was just with the boys, I didn’t get much done in terms of my PhD viva prep. I worked more in the evenings on those days. But all of this was documented in my schedule, in advance.
Executing my PhD viva plan with the kids at home
So, pre-PhD viva was all about preparation as my thesis is a beast! It’s humongous! So, I knew I needed to give myself sufficient time. When I allocated those days for PhD viva prep, I broke my thesis down by chapter. I then allocated a certain number of days per chapter.
I aimed to read my thesis twice, which was a huge undertaking because it was so big. However, I still wanted to read it twice. And so. I broke it down by chapter and I allocated days for each chapter.
Now for the first reading of my thesis, I just read. I didn’t do any extra reading or go off and reread references. No, I didn’t do anything like that. I just read it because I wanted to just remind myself of the major arguments I was making, the main influences on my thoughts, and the main authors I’d cited. This was just from a kind of mental simulation point of view. I just wanted to re-familiarise myself with my PhD thesis in detail.
So that was the first reading. Again, that was by chapter. So, I broke down each chapter into sections. I allocated which sections and from which chapters I was going to read on which days, and I read those without stopping, just reading.
Then once I’d read through the thesis, I broke that down again for the second reading. This time for the second reading, I read the thesis, read my very detailed notes, and read key papers again. This helped to remind me of important details in notes, papers, and the thesis. As I did this, I jotted down the main points. I do find personally that the act of writing things out helps me to commit them to memory.
And so I wrote out the main points, main arguments and main potential points of defence. If I felt I might have had to defend a particular decision that I made during my PhD, I wrote that out.
So, I had all these notes, all these papers, all of the actual thesis to refer to.
Printing my PhD thesis for PhD viva prep
One of the points I should make here actually, is that I printed a ‘PhD viva prep’ version of my thesis.
I had the digital version, which was fine. However, I found it was a lot easier for me to read a printed version so that I could jot notes down in the margins and highlight things etc.
So, before I started my PhD viva preparation, I printed a version of my thesis just for ‘PhD viva prep’.
That’s one thing to consider when you’re preparing for your PhD viva. You may want to print a version of your thesis just for that purpose.
In hindsight, I probably wish I’d printed maybe two pages per page or even four pages per page, but I printed it just one page per page, so it was a very, very thick document.
But, the whole idea is to familiarise yourself with your thesis. Know it inside out!
Printing it and having those two readings, really helped me to feel confident in finding tables quickly, chapters quickly, references quickly, and particular sections quickly if I needed to.
So, in summary, I read my thesis twice, the first time without any kind of extra input, just reading.
The second time I wrote notes, reread key references and made sure that I was familiar again with the rationale behind why I chose those references and also the main arguments that I was trying to make in my PhD thesis.
By the time I got to a couple of days before my thesis, I’d read my thesis twice and I had all my notes and felt pretty confident.
Make sure you have a ‘mock’ PhD viva
One of the other things I did before my PhD viva was that I had a ‘mock PhD viva’ with my primary supervisor, which I found helpful.
At that point, I’d already read my thesis and I was reading it again. It was like a week before my PhD viva that I had this ‘mock viva’ with him.
It was nice the way we did it because we split it into two parts.
We had the first half of the mock PhD viva where I was asked questions and had to come up with answers in response. That was helpful because it gave me a feel for how to answer the questions.
Having to articulate the answer out loud to someone other than my husband (bless his soul) was really helpful.
And what it also made me realise is that I needed succinct ways of answering questions. So even though I knew the answers to the questions, because I hadn’t by that point practised verbally articulating them, it was really helpful to practice saying these things out loud to someone.
And so that’s what we did.
And then in the second half of the mock PhD viva, which was a couple of hours after the first, the first half, we practised saying my answers a bit more succinctly. That was super helpful as well. So, I don’t know whether you’ve got that option, but if you do, it’s worth having a mock PhD viva.
And it doesn’t have to be a couple of hours apart. It could be a couple of days apart or even a week apart. Just having a first go at it and then having a second opportunity to do it better, with slightly different questions or slightly tweaked questions, will allow you to practice articulating your answers most succinctly.
After my mock PhD viva, I then realised that I needed to do more practice with succinct articulation. And so I got some more practice PhD viva questions, which I found online here. I stood in front of my mirror and practised answering those questions out loud. Literally, out loud!
I also practised them with my husband. I got him to listen to some of my answers as well, which I’m sure he found so much fun!
But the point is, do practise! Do practise answering questions because it’s great to know the information. After all, you’ve spent a lot of time on your PhD thesis and you KNOW your stuff. But. it’s worth verbalising it, you know, in answer to particular questions. Then, you realise how much you ramble under the pressure before getting to the point!
So, if you practice those questions in advance when you come across them in your PhD viva, your brain will immediately go back to your experience of succinctly communicating your answers. This will be so helpful for you.
You can’t practice all the questions. You don’t know what questions are going to come up in your PhD viva. A lot of the questions that I practised didn’t come up in my PhD viva. But, other questions I didn’t practise came up.
I think the fact that I felt very prepared and I knew my work inside out, and because I’d been able to practice succinct articulation, I was able to deliver the answers in a very professional and well-articulated way.
And that was the PhD viva prep!
This continued up until the night before my PhD viva. This brings me to another point…
Prepare your PhD viva space in advance (if virtual)
One of the other things I did was, not only preparing for the actual PhD viva and being able to answer questions, but I also had thoughts about how I was going to set up for the PhD viva. I wanted to make sure that I set up in a way that was comfortable for me, and that I felt confident and happy with. Also, I wanted to ensure that I could access my PhD thesis and my notes if I needed to.
And so, I set myself up at our dining table with everything spread out on the table. I had two laptops ready. One laptop I used for the actual PhD viva on MS Teams, and on the other laptop, I had a digital version of my thesis. Of course, I also had the printed version as well.
In the actual PhD viva, I didn’t actually refer to the digital version of my thesis. I just used the physical version, but I wanted it there just in case.
I had my notes and things.
What I also did was that, even though I printed a version of my thesis, I also printed a couple of my tables and figures on separate sheets, because they’re complex and I wanted a way of quickly being able to just refer to them without having to look for them in the thesis.
So that’s something worth considering as well. I didn’t print all of them but just the key ones and that was really helpful for me during my PhD viva.
So, that’s all the preparation!
Then I set the room up. I blocked it off from the boys. I told them ‘Boys? You’re not allowed at this dining table. Do not touch anything. Everything is all set up!’ But to be fair, I did this the night before when they’d gone up for bed. So, it was only that morning of the PhD viva that I had to make sure our toddler didn’t go and scatter all of my papers everywhere because that would not have been good!
When PhD viva day arrived
So everything was set up the night before.
Now onto part two of this post, which is all about the actual PhD viva and how that went for me. At the end, we’ll go over my top takeaway tips for how to nail your PhD viva.
In the first half of the post, I talked mainly about preparation for your PhD viva and how to juggle that with real life happening at the same time, which is our reality as Scholarly Mamas.
Real life is often happening with our kids and other responsibilities.
And so, I wanted to just share my experience of doing that. I did have our kids at home on their summer holidays while I was preparing for my PhD viva and therefore the first half of this post focussed on my preparation.
In this second half, I wanted to take that even further and talk about what my actual PhD viva experience was like, how I navigated that, and how I felt afterwards.
I just want to share my first-hand account with you of what it’s like (if you’re in the UK at least) to do a PhD viva. I hope you find it helpful.
Quick invitation to take our fun Scholarly Mama quiz
So just before we delve into the continuation of this conversation about nailing your PhD viva with this purposeful Scholarly Mama strategy, I just wanted to share with you this fun quiz. It will take you about three to five minutes of your time and will discover your purposeful Scholarly Mama trait, which I found in my experience was so helpful in navigating this journey throughout, and of course, as well, going through and preparing for and experiencing my PhD viva.
So, if you want to know what your purposeful Scholarly Mama trait is, simply click here. If you’ve got a spare three to five minutes, do complete the quiz and I will send you personalised tips for how you can navigate this journey more purposefully.
Okay, let’s dive back into the conversation about my PhD viva!
Plans for the kids for PhD viva day
As a Scholarly Mama, you not only have the preparation for the actual PhD viva itself to consider i.e. knowing your thesis and research, the key references, and key arguments. Also, you must prepare to defend those and the decisions that you made during your PhD. There are also practical preparations to make. You may need to make a plan for the kids with your spouse/friends/ family for who’s going to watch the kids while your PhD viva is happening. You must also think about the arrangements you may need to make beforehand.
And that’s exactly what I did.
As I mentioned earlier, I talked about how I set up the space for my remote PhD viva. I chose to set up the night before the PhD viva to make sure I had all of the key things I wanted to refer to during the viva itself. Also, I made sure that I wasn’t waking up that morning and becoming stressed about having to set everything up on the day of the PhD viva.
So my preparation was all done the night before. When I woke up that morning, I wanted as stress-free and as relaxed an experience as possible.
And so all of the preparation and setting up happened the night before.
Of course, the challenge of doing that was then to keep the kids away from said ‘set up’, especially our two-year-old. Suddenly, there was a keen interest in Mummy’s computer and her work… typical! š
As I had to try and keep him away from those, that required a bit of planning and preparation.
So, in terms of the actual PhD viva day, Kevin (my husband) and I had a plan for the boys. He was going to get up and get everyone out of the house early, so that I could do my PhD viva without anyone (namely the boys), being noisy in the background or coming to ‘talk to Mummy’ during the PhD viva etc. So they left about 45 minutes before the PhD viva began.
But let’s circle back to the start of the PhD viva day…
When the PhD viva nerves kick in
Up until that point, I felt really at peace. I felt prepared. I felt confident, all that. And then on the actual PhD viva morning, when I woke up, I suddenly started to feel really nervous.
Like all of a sudden, I was just overwhelmed with nerves.
I remember thinking to myself, ‘Oh my goodness, Michelle, you have prepared for this PhD viva. There is no reason for this fear!’
And I, as you know, I’m a Christian. I’d been praying about it and just asking God to, you know, just remove the fear and help me to remember why I was doing this.
What was my motivation?
Also, what was my why?
And what could be the impact of my work?
How could I go into this PhD viva with faith and confidence?
The song that I tagged in my Instagram reel where I shared my PhD viva experience was the song I’d been playing over and over and over.
The boys will tell you, I was just playing it over and over every chance I got!
I listened to that song quite a bit that morning as I was getting showered and dressed and everything. I was playing the song, listening to it, singing it and just praying and asking God to take me through.
We then went downstairs, had breakfast, played and I chatted with the boys quite a bit. My toddler wanted to build blocks! I just thought ‘Why not, let me go and enjoy my time with him!’. And that calmed me right down because it reminded me of why I was doing this!
They’d always been my motivation. Just playing with him and chatting with the boys, laughing and joking with my husband Kevin and the boys just really grounded me.
It reminded me of the unconditional support that they give me.
The boys were so excited about me doing my PhD viva. They kept asking me how I felt, if I was excited, if I was nervous, and if I was ready. They were so interested.
So we had breakfast, and we got them ready after playing and chatting. Everyone got ready as per the plan in terms of time. I got myself ready, came downstairs, got myself seated, took a few pre-viva selfies and got ready to begin my PhD viva.
Let the fun begin!
Then, as I was about to sit and start my PhD viva, a few minutes before starting, I realised that our gardeners were about. They were making so much noise with lawnmowers and trimmers and all the things.
And I was just literally thinking, what in the world???
So as we started the PhD viva, I did offer an apology to the panel. I said, ‘I’m really sorry, but I’ve got gardeners here today. You may hear a little bit of background noise.’
But because I was using my headset, I think that blocked out some of the noise because they said they couldn’t hear any background noise. So I thought, okay, thank goodness!
My PhD viva was four hours from start to finish.
We did have a couple of comfort breaks. I think they were about five minutes each. Just enough time to stretch the legs and use the bathroom, if needed.
What an experience it was!
But it was a positive experience overall. I won’t share the details of what they said (just know there was some amazing feedback). It was a positive experience. And that was interesting because I’d heard so many stories about negative PhD viva experiences. But to just go through that moment and come out of it feeling so positive and so inspired and feeling so proud of myself? Wow!
They went through my thesis with a fine tooth comb! I don’t think there was anything that wasn’t covered in my PhD viva. Lots of detailed questions, but overall, I think it was such a beautiful experience. I felt so proud of myself. Just looking back on that now, I think, ‘Wow, that was such an unforgettable experience!’ Yes, I had to. defend a lot of things. I had to answer a lot of detailed questions. I’m glad that I prepared the way that I did because it allowed me to do that. But it was just such a positive experience overall.
So afterwards, literally as soon as I got out of my PhD viva, I called my husband. I told him it went really well and that I just felt this overwhelming sense of joy and gratitude. I couldn’t even believe it was over!
What can I say? My prayers were answered and hard work always pays off!
Take home tips for preparing for your PhD viva
So here are my five takeaway top tips for preparing for your PhD viva:
- The first is to know your thesis inside out. You need to thoroughly research and understand what you did. Why you did it. Why did you choose the methods you chose? What was your basis for the methodology? What were your main results and findings? What are the implications of the research? So really be prepared to discuss every aspect of your thesis, in detail… in depth. Key, key point! I cannot emphasize that enough. You need to know your thesis inside out.
- The second, which I did and I thought was really helpful, is to practice mock PhD vivas. You can arrange these with your supervisor or even colleagues. If you know someone who has been through that experience and is willing to sit with you and ask you questions and give you critique on your answers, then do that. I found it to be really helpful. Definitely consider mock PhD vivas. This will help you to get used to not only remembering what you need to say, but also to practise the articulation of what you need to say. And obviously if they’re able to give you constructive feedback, that would also be helpful because you can then take that on board and prepare to do this in your PhD viva.
- The third point is to anticipate. the questions. So again, as I was reading my thesis a second time (the detailed time), I tried to think about the questions I might be asked. What was the argument I was making? What would be my defence for decisions that I made throughout my PhD? Can I defend those? What might they ask me about those? So thinking about anticipating questions, I think it was really helpful. Even better if you could find practice questions (which I shared a link to above). Think about questions around e.g. what are the reasons for the methodology? How did you interpret the data and what’s the broader significance of your work and your research? What are the implications of that? How does it sit within existing literature and what implications does it have for your particular field?
- Make sure you’re familiar with key literature and brush up on the literature in your field so that you’re able to demonstrate a strong contextual understanding because you want to make sure that your examiners can see that not only have you done your research, but you understand the contextual influence of it. Make sure you understand how it sits in in with the existing literature and be prepared to discuss how your research fits in with the existing body of literature. In other words, does it confirm or contradict what’s already known in your field? What does your research add to the existing body of knowledge and literature?
- And then the fifth point is to stay calm and confident on the day of the PhD viva, whatever helps you to remain calm and confident, you do that. For me, it was grounding myself in what mattered. It was grounding myself in my family, spending time with them, playing with my toddler, laughing and joking around with my husband and our boys and just reminding myself of why I am doing this. It was also having faith and trusting God to bring me through this PhD viva. Remembering why I’m doing this and the purpose of what I’m doing, I think helped. I chose an anthem song that I listened to over and over. And the more I listened to that song, the more I internalised the lyrics. It just really helped me to feel confident. It helped me to feel prepared and ready to go! If that means taking lots of deep breaths and listening carefully to the questions being asked and taking your time to respond to them if you need to think about a response before you blurt out the first thing that comes to your mind, then do that!
One thing I would recommend (and I did do) is to have a blank sheet of paper and a pen so that you can jot down a question if you need a few seconds to think about a response. Sometimes just writing the question down or at least jotting a few points down will help you with succinct articulation of the answer. I would recommend doing that.
It’s also okay to ask for clarification if you’re unsure about a question or if you didn’t hear a question well enough to answer, then just be able to ask for clarification or repetition if necessary.
Your PhD viva is an opportunity, not an interrogation
I guess the last thing I would say is to remember that your PhD viva is truly a unique opportunity to showcase your expertise and defend your research.
One of the things that I found was very helpful, and I said this to my husband and the boys before the PhD viva, was remembering that I am the expert in the room in my thesis. So, of course, my examiners are experts and they are top experts in their fields, but I am the expert in MY research. I am the expert in my thesis, and that’s what I’m here to defend.
And so just thinking that way and remembering that I know my work.
I’ve prepared.
Yes, I’ve done this work.
You better believe that I’ve prepared for this PhD viva!
I am proud of what I’ve done.
And just remember that all my PhD viva is, is a professional and high-level discussion of work that I am very, very proud of.
In my case, it was a very constructive, rather intellectual conversation, and I just loved that about it.
And so, if you take anything away from this post, I hope it’s that your PhD viva is an opportunity.
I saw mine as an opportunity. Yes, I lived it, went through it and survived it because I perceived it as an opportunity. No, I didn’t perceive it as this confrontational interrogation. It was an opportunity!
I saw it in a very positive light. And I think that helped me to alleviate the fears, to be confident, and to deliver the best possible responses that I was capable of delivering.
And honestly, all I can do is just give so much thanks for the experience that it was. It was a very positive experience, but it was a culmination of many, many, many years of work.
So many hours and so much effort went into my PhD.
To be able to spend four hours of ‘expert’ time delving into the nitty gritty of all of that? I loved it!
All the best in your PhD viva!
Honestly, I hope that you can take something away from my experience and that it helps and encourages you to see your PhD viva as an opportunity and not an interrogation.
Mama, I wish you the very best!
If you’ve got a PhD viva coming up, if there’s anything else that you’d like me to share, please let me know. Send me a DM on Instagram and let me know because I wasn’t quite sure how in-depth you wanted me to go with all of this.
There are a couple of other tips that I could share about my preparation phase and also my delivery as well for the actual PhD viva in terms of how we structured my notes and how I structured my preparation and my thinking. So if you would like to delve deeper into that, I may consider doing some kind of follow-up to this.
I hope that you found this helpful.
As you know, you probably know me well enough by now to know that for me, my PhD was about more than a title.
It was an experience.
It was a journey.
And for me, the PhD viva was the most amazing culmination I could have asked for. And I’m just so grateful when I reflect on my experience, I feel so much gratitude.
So until next time, Mama, I’m sending you lots of love and lots of gratitude. And I hope you found this post helpful.
See you in the next one.
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