Viva

Congrats stinkle

I think you're right; about two weeks would be plenty of time to prepare, but I've known people who've only had a week and they got on fine too. I had two months and it felt way too long Had my copy of the thesis covered in postits and didn't even need to refer to any of them in the viva! On the upside I felt really prepared... but it retrospect it was a bit of a waste of time :P

I wish I had read this thread before my viva

However all the prep I did paid off and about a month ago I became a Dr.

The viva itself was great. We have a public talk and a private viva, which was perfect for me as I don't mind presenting in front of people at all, but I was glad I was able to answer the questions without an audience as it meant I could give my opinions rather than the opinions of my supervisors.

Overall I had one page of minor corrections with one paragraph to be sent to the extern for review (it was a fairly specific topic that the intern wasn't happy to say yes or no to adequate corrections being made) so I'm taking the time to re-do all of my graphs and make them pretty (rather than the rush job copy-and-paste from publications that I did :O ) and starting (continuing) the arduous task of job seeking.

No pressure :P

Overall though it was an amazing experience. I will never forget a few bits of it though!

1) I wasn't asked the "so tell us about your project in one sentence / paragraph" question, we were straight into it.
2) 10 mins in I had a fair idea it would go well.
3) 3 hours 10 minutes after I went into the room I was asked to step outside and I had the best pee of my life.
4) THE LONGEST WAIT EVER until I was called back in.
5) The most awkward conversation after the whole "congratulations" part when they kept asking me about my future / further publications / opinions on the field: I just wanted to get out of the room and tell everyone.

The choice of your examiners is more important than the viva itself IMO.

Be aware of your examiners strengths and weakness and prepare accordingly e.g. if many of their published works are extremely quantitative in nature then you can assume their statistical analysis is very strong and if there is a weakness in your thesis in this area then they will notice it and focus on it.

El Siglo wrote: »

Have my viva in two weeks time. Absolutely bricking it. Have read over the thesis, highlighted some key points, made some notes, and that's it. Not sure what else to do apart from depress myself over the number of typos and grammatical errors. It's on early in the morning and it can't go on for too long as the external has to fly out. Doesn't help that I've an undergrad fieldtrip next week and get back the day before the viva.

Don't worry yourself about the typos and grammatical errors. I was so tight with making a fees deadline when I was submitting my thesis, that I didn't even read through it to check for typos and errors!!

Do you have your presentation sorted and rehearsed? (if you have to do one that is?)
For my viva, myself and my supervisor came up with questions that we thought the examiners would ask (and then prepared answers for those questions).
Also, have you read through some of your external examiner's articles that relate to your topic. It's important that you have a good depth of knowledge about their research.

dastardly00 wrote: »

Do you have your presentation sorted and rehearsed? (if you have to do one that is?)

No, but I was going to throw together four slides just to summarise the key findings of the work (even just as a handout really in the form of bullet points), more of an 'executive summary' type of thing. But we're not required to do one though.

For my viva, myself and my supervisor came up with questions that we thought the examiners would ask (and then prepared answers for those questions).

I've noted a few key questions that might come up, the supervisor is a lot like the examiner (same generation, same research background etc...) so his comments when correcting the thesis came in handy in terms of clarifying methods etc... I've got some generic questions noted so hopefully they'll come up!

Also, have you read through some of your external examiner's articles that relate to your topic. It's important that you have a good depth of knowledge about their research.

Yeh, I've gone through some of his articles but we're slightly divergent in our focus. He's more 'big picture' and I've gone into detail (about 600 pages of detail), but in saying that he's seen my work so he's got some ideas, I'll try and relate them back to his work (e.g. "I see x and y these might relate to z in your work on...").

Thanks for the advise man, really appreciate it.

djpbarry wrote: »

Better for you to be aware of the typos going into the viva than to have the examiners bring them to your attention. Take the list of known corrections into the viva with you.

Brilliant, I'll definitely do that one alright.

That's certainly less than ideal - I'd try and get out of it if I were you. Some would argue that it might be good to take your mind off things for a bit - I might agree with them if you got back a little earlier than the day before the viva.

Well my internal examiner is leading the fieldtrip so that might be worse if I pulled out with it being three days away. It's the timing of everything, found out I was going about six months ago; found out about my viva about a month ago. May just bring the beast with me and see what I can get done.

Thanks again for the advise, really appreciate it. Not sure what to think at the moment, it's just a really unnatural thing to prepare for in a way. Sure, we'll see how it goes!

Thanks folks! :pac:

El Siglo wrote: »

Passed my viva, minor corrections. Went extremely well, very positive, very fair, a very good discussion. Few things to sort out but nothing overly major or fundamental (spelling, grammar, add a few sentences to clarify points). I did do a PowerPoint presentation on a laptop and the examiners enjoyed that. The chair of the viva said it was one of the best defences he's ever seen, so aye, good craic!!!

Congratulations!

I have mine on September 9th. Quite nervous about it, as I have never interviewed particularly well.

At the moment I'm putting together the presentation which I have to give prior to the questioning. I have a skeleton structure, but in case I'm omitting anything important, I'd love to hear what others have put into theirs (those who have done presentations; I understand it is not always a requirement).

Congrats on the publications! That's a big deal and should stand to you. Submitting is the bigger event, you know your stuff inside out at this stage so try to enjoy the defense

BumblebeeGirl wrote: »

Thanks! I know the thesis well but I'm still a little rusty on the background theory. .if that makes sense..

It does, I recall stumbling a little over the background intro stuff myself! Defo go over that. Do you have to give a public talk or anything beforehand? If so, be sure to blab about the publications!

Well the talk should set you up nicely before you go in. The time will fly by when youre in the room, honest. The hard work is all done at this point

I had mine recently. It went well

It was quite convivial and lasted 2-2.5 hours.