Hi all,

I have my MPhil/PhD upgrade viva on Monday and was just wondering if anybody had any last minute words of wisdom for me as I'm starting to feel a bit panicked. I submitted my upgrade report 3 weeks ago and have felt like I'm in limbo ever since. I've been trying to prepare by going over my report and doing some extra reading in the hope that I can at least attempt to answer the questions I will be asked. I had a practice version of the upgrade viva with my sups earlier in the week and I think it was OK, it ended up being partly mock viva partly discussion over the sort of things I might get asked and how i should answer the questions. They think I will be OK but I'm just worried that I'm not going to be able to answer the questions on the day as I always get really nervous when people ask me questions, I even felt nervous in the practice version! Any tips on how to overcome this?

Hi Pixie,
Mine's Tuesday, so I'm starting to feel as you do. I have to give a 30 minute presentation followed by an hour of questioning - sounds like fun!
The only advice I can think of is to know your stuff, & I know that sounds lame & obvious but it's easy to forget that you're the expert here - you know what you've looked at & why, & where you're currently working, better than any of the panel.
Mine is broken into 5 key areas I have to prove, & I'm probably saying what you already know, but they are
1) The research problem: 2) related literature: 3) appropriate method: 4) realistic schedule & 5) original contribution to knowledge, so I've planned my presentation around those.
Otherwise, don't forget to breathe - out as well as in, I always forget the exhalation bit when I'm nervous!!
Good luck & let us know how it goes, Mog (up)

Hi Mog,
Thanks for your reply. It's good to know I'm not the only one going through this soon! I don't have to give a presentation as I did one a month ago which was part of the process but was not assessed for the upgrade. I do face 60-90 minutes of questioning tomorrow morning from 2 academics who although they are in my department don't know much about my topic. However one of them is very hot on methods so I'm most worried about that mainly because my PhD doesn't involve any primary data collection as all the data I need is already available so that section is focused more on analysis.

I need to try and stop worrying, am going to spend the day going over my report and my practice questions one last time. I've made a list of 40 potential questions in the hope that I can cover nearly all eventualities.

Good luck with yours on Tuesday, I will be back to let you know how it goes :-)

Just had my upgrade viva and I passed! Am now officially a PhD student!!! :-)

Great news Pixie :-)

Yippee!! Well done Pixie, that's fab news!

Congrats, Mog :-)

Hi Pixie,
Hope you're still celebrating. I passed too so here's a mince pie for us each!! (mince)(mince)
Onwards & upwards, Mog

Yay congratulations Mog!! (up)

(mince)(mince) pies for you too

now we can get on with some proper research :-)