I have submitted my PhD thesis a few weeks ago, and now the next step is the viva voce, as they call it in UK, the thesis discussion. It’s next Tuesday. Easy, my supervisor says. It’s stuff you know. It’s stuff you created. You just go there, talk about what you did, explain it all like you do to me - done.
And it’s true, but the problem is that now I realize I am panicking. I have a history of performing badly in oral exams and interviews - I forget things, get tied up, start stammering, sweat and so on, out of nervousness. I wouldn’t have big problems trying to explain the same things privately, even to the same people, but labelling it an exam sends me in panic mode.
This damaged me many times in the past. How can I cope with that?
Oh, but you’re explaining it privately. Your advisor will be one of the people in the, what do you call it, the committee? Talk to him. Look at him, with an occasional look at the other committee members so they know you haven’t forgotten them. When you get to the questions part, look at the person asking the question.
It isn’t public.
It’s private with a few guests who should follow the rule “los mirones, de marmol:” “onlookers are made of stone.”
Plus seriously, you’d have to forget the spelling of your own name, to fail at that stage. You remember how to spell it, do you? eeeel ei ar es space ei ar iu en es…
PS: “Committee” has way too many double letters, say I!
PPS: don’t be afraid to stop and regroup. They did defend their own thesis at one point, you know. And wear diapers. And pee all over their mothers just as their mothers were changing said diapers… It’s much better to say “give me one minute here” and then explain things correctly than to trip over your own tongue, which is painful as it makes you go splat on the floor, flat on your face, and then not only do you need to get youb poob doze fixed by a plastic surgeon, you’d need a bandage on your tongue.
Err, no, he won’t be there. It will be only me against two potentially hostile people. If the same thing happened to me as my friend John, who had to contend with two stubborn idiots that kept repeating that they wanted him to perform extra experiments that after a year of work didn’t show anything useful, or my friend Nan who had an external examiner who thought language issues were faults in his thesis, then I’m in for a hell of a ride.
Ugh, mine was way better than that, as it was a public talk followed by discussion with my committee- almost all of whom I’d known well, as I had meetings with them twice a year the entire time I was working on my thesis. (We had to add one member six months before our defense, but it turned out to be the head of the department where I worked, so it was no problem.)
Try not to sweat it; they might give you a bunch of crap, but they don’t want to fail you if you’ve been given permission to defend. They also went through it themselves and know you’re nervous.
Congratulations, Lars, you’re almost done. I defended my PhD thesis almost 11 years ago; if things in the UK are anything like here in the states, it shouldn’t be a big deal.
Keep in mind that you’ve made it to the defense stage because your advisor thinks you (and your thesis) are ready for it. And YOU should think you’re ready for it, too. This isn’t some esoteric course material that you are new to and have only been studying for a few months: you’ve been poring over this stuff for 4+ years, day in and day out. Your committee members may have some expertise in your field, but in that room, YOU are the expert on YOUR studies.
It may help if you can alter your mindset a bit, moving from “a student discussing his studies with a bunch of high-and-mighty profs” to “a dissertator discussing his work with some colleagues.” Surely you’ve had casual discussions with fellow dissertators, in which you were able to calmly, coolly discuss your work. As was noted earlier, don’t be afraid to pause for a moment to think before (or during) speaking, just as you would if you were chatting in the hallway with a fellow student.
I won’t go so far as to say the defense is just a formality, but I believe it’s extremely rare for someone to not pass.
Curious, if you don’t mind, what is your field of study?
good mojo for Lars, good mojo for Lars, good mojo for Lars…
So it is only those two people and you, only you haven’t met them before?
The one time I had something similar it was an “oral exam,” part of the requirements for what should’a been my PhD (hi, I’m a dropout), my undergrad defense was with two dozen people there. My advisor and two other professors (both of whom hated my guts, yay, but still couldn’t have failed me in a million years), my family, and every friend or classmate who happened to be in town. I’ve seen defenses that had to move to the auditorium.
You’ve done good work. You know the work you’ve done inside and out. You’ll do fine.
In the US, if the committee has a problem with your work, they should have said something months before your defense. If there is a problem with your thesis, its the job of the committee to point these things out before you defend.
In UK it’s different. The examiners are given one copy each of the thesis after I submit it, then they read it and the day of the viva is their first occasion to ask me to clarify whatever it is they didn’t get, or whatever it is that needs to be justified.
I’ve also been telling myself all those good things, such as being allowed to submit because it’s submission worthy, and me being the biggest expert on my own stuff, but for some reason it doesn’t make me feel better.
The only time I’ve ever heard of a problem is when there is a major political issue between your advisor and members of the committee. If that’s not the case, don’t worry. The other tests you may have taken to get this far are designed to winnow out those who can’t hack it. You’ve already demonstrated that you can.
If you’re nervous, make up some questions that you think they might ask. I bet you see more flaws in the work than anyone else possibly could. Think of answers to them. Also, don’t worry about questions on things not in the major line of your work. An excellent answer to questions about side issues is “that is a great topic for future research.” Lots of people use that during the question period after they present a paper.
BTW, if your library has the first volume of Isaac Asimov’s autobiography, “In Memory Yet Green” look up the section on his defense. It might make you feel better.
Good luck, but you won’t need it.
