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Livin' La Viva Voce
Apr. 19th, 2019 06:13 pmAs I feared, this blog has been given short shrift the last few weeks (I'm usually guilty of this when it comes to new ventures), and I've been devoting a lot of time to my new gaming blog at nintendocs.dreamwidth.org. Because of that, I realise that I haven't updated darksolez with life post-viva (the oral exam I discussed in my last post). I'm not going to make this post accessible or available to everyone, seeing as the details are somewhat confidential. I'm not going to be arrested or anything, but I don't want to disclose everyone's names everywhere either.
The viva, in the Irish system, operates as follows. There are three representatives present: your supervisor (who's there purely as a witness, and who can take notes on your behalf); an internal examiner (someone from your School or Department who hasn't been supervising you but will have an interest in your topic); and an external examiner. This last person is the most crucial, as they will lead the conversation and have the most questions to ask. Technically, you can choose practically anyone who is knowledgeable about your subject area, as long as they're not from your university. The person you choose as your extern will also be most likely to provide a reference for you in the long term, and that's why it's often recommended that you choose the person with the most connections: the most established, most illustrious professor, who mastered your subject matter long before you did. However, I will debunk this theory here, now, and say that the most important criteria are a) to choose someone who will be able to appear, in the flesh (if the external examiner is on the other side of the world, a video call may have to suffice - or else hope that your university has an enormous budget), and b) to choose someone whose style of writing/criticism matches yours. If you're not exactly a theory buff, then don't elect someone who is to be the judge of your thesis. If your approach is more historical, say, then choose someone who adopts a similar methodology in their writing. I imagine that viva horror stories (if any of them are true, which I doubt) arise when the examiner and the examined possess divergent critical approaches. Find someone whose style you like, or better yet, take the advice of your supervisor, and don't simply plump for what I call the coup d'externe. In terms of the results possible, the majority of people are hoping for 'Award: Minor Corrections.' This means that there's very little wrong with your thesis, and once those things are fixed, it'll pass right away. This is an excellent result, and it's also the most common. There's also 'Award: Major Corrections,' which means that there's something more significantly troubling about your thesis - a misguided argument or big gaps missing in the literature - and this means a second viva is required, once you've made an attempt to fix those glaring errors. If this happens, your supervisor is at fault, I fear: they should have picked up on these problematic elements prior to submission.
Hindsight is a great thing... I can write out these explanations because my exam went well. If it hadn't, who knows what I'd be saying. When the time for my exam came, my supervisor and I were waiting outside the building (I arrived far too early, naturally), when it became apparent that there was going to be a serious amount of noise taking place next door to the exam room, due to renovations. Indeed, one friendly office worker came out and warned us that if we were planning to hold the viva there, we might have to do so alongside a virtual construction site. A quick phone call later and the exam was relocated to another office - I am incredibly grateful that my supervisor/examiners didn't attempt to persevere through the noise, or to gamble on the possibility that it wouldn't be so bad; they erred on the side of caution, because it's better to be safe than sorry. Good form, there.
Arriving at the new location, the whole exam began even more promptly than I had anticipated. Very little pomp and circumstance overall - not that I had been expecting the red carpet treatment! - and without nary a prelude or introduction, we were mid-viva. A couple of other points to make regarding the format. You hear of vivas that go on for a long time, but I think this practice is growing increasingly old-fashioned: now, most lecturers are content to conclude the exam after 1.5/2 hours. If the exam wears on longer than that, I wouldn't take that as a bad sign; it may just mean that yours is a longer thesis (nearing 90,000 words, say), or that it's so damn interesting the examiners can't tear themselves away. But 1.5/2 hours is the new average, broadly speaking. They'll have your thesis to hand, along with lots of accompanying questions and notes, so don't be afraid to point or refer to parts of the thesis that are relevant to your answers - it'll be within very recent memory, and it's right in front of them if they need to query something. The external examiner is the chair of the discussion, and will pose most of the questions. It's also good practice to bring a notebook with you. Your supervisor will be listening to everything anyway, so they should have their own notes, but feel free to jot ideas or suggestions down mid-conversation: it's that scholarly habit of taking notes during a conference Q&A to appear diligent (and boost recall, obviously).
I won't bore you all to tears with a blow-by-blow account of the discussion, but I can confirm that yes, everyone I spoke to was right about their predictions for the viva: it's impossible to predict (that much we know now, anyway). None of the secondary literature or theory that I had looked at in anticipation of the viva came up (none of it - and had I endeavoured to bring it into the conversation, it wouldn't have worked). Luckily, since submitting my thesis I had made the decision to read every Faulkner novel (and most of the short stories) once more, so that they were fresh in my memory for the day. This is not something I was advised to do, I was told there was no need - but I felt that it was the most satisfying and enjoyable way of refreshing my knowledge about Faulkner. Call it a post-thesis victory lap. I didn't expect to be asked so much (almost exclusively - almost to the extent that my thesis faded into the background) about Faulkner's primary texts; I expected that my methodology, theory, and argument would be unpacked, and that I'd have to justify each decision I made in the composition of my thesis. Not so: the exam was all about Faulkner, forming connections between his texts in one breath, and pitting them against each other in the next. This was challenging - a post-viva headache is almost inevitable - but it's also something I was far more willing to discuss than the ins and outs of my theoretical framework.
Following this discussion, I was asked to leave the room, whereupon they would form their final conclusions and call me back in. I was asked, too, not to wander far, because apparently, they lost one PhD candidate that way a few years back - he went for coffee and disappeared into a black hole or something. At this point I was just glad to have the exam over, and I thought that it had gone well. The start had been rough (the first, most difficult question, was a little Charlie Brown - "Good grief"), and at the end, they pointed out a number of errors and parts which they felt needed expansion. But, apparently, none of it was enough to keep them from awarding me the most positive result possible: 'Award: No Corrections Needed.' To have put all that work in, for years, and to receive that kind of result, was, and is, hugely satisfying - a true vindication of my ideas, my hard work and perfectionism, and my love of Faulkner.
I hope that you've gleaned a little insight into the viva voce exam with this entry - if you have any questions, do let me know, though in terms of tips I think that it's hard to generalise. A lot of it depends on which extern you get, so my advice would be to start with that: it's one aspect of the exam that you have considerable control over, because an extern can't really be nominated without your say-so. People will tell you, prior to the viva, that it'll be fine and that there's no need to worry - but you won't feel that way about it until it's finished, I think (similar to any other exam). And even though I didn't make use of any theory or secondary literature in my viva, and I wasn't quizzed about any of it, that's also due to the fact that my thesis is a single-author thesis (a rare entity, these days), and thus the conversation is almost inevitably funnelled down to that single author. If you cover multiple different authors or periods in your thesis, the conversation won't be as concentrated, I think, and will branch off in various directions (which may work to your advantage, as you can redirect the conversation more easily). It was still worth reading that secondary literature and theory for my own peace of mind, too, so I wouldn't neglect additional reading, but certainly, in English Studies anyway, it's the books and films that first grabbed our attention (and your examiners', surely), so prioritise those core texts.
The viva, in the Irish system, operates as follows. There are three representatives present: your supervisor (who's there purely as a witness, and who can take notes on your behalf); an internal examiner (someone from your School or Department who hasn't been supervising you but will have an interest in your topic); and an external examiner. This last person is the most crucial, as they will lead the conversation and have the most questions to ask. Technically, you can choose practically anyone who is knowledgeable about your subject area, as long as they're not from your university. The person you choose as your extern will also be most likely to provide a reference for you in the long term, and that's why it's often recommended that you choose the person with the most connections: the most established, most illustrious professor, who mastered your subject matter long before you did. However, I will debunk this theory here, now, and say that the most important criteria are a) to choose someone who will be able to appear, in the flesh (if the external examiner is on the other side of the world, a video call may have to suffice - or else hope that your university has an enormous budget), and b) to choose someone whose style of writing/criticism matches yours. If you're not exactly a theory buff, then don't elect someone who is to be the judge of your thesis. If your approach is more historical, say, then choose someone who adopts a similar methodology in their writing. I imagine that viva horror stories (if any of them are true, which I doubt) arise when the examiner and the examined possess divergent critical approaches. Find someone whose style you like, or better yet, take the advice of your supervisor, and don't simply plump for what I call the coup d'externe. In terms of the results possible, the majority of people are hoping for 'Award: Minor Corrections.' This means that there's very little wrong with your thesis, and once those things are fixed, it'll pass right away. This is an excellent result, and it's also the most common. There's also 'Award: Major Corrections,' which means that there's something more significantly troubling about your thesis - a misguided argument or big gaps missing in the literature - and this means a second viva is required, once you've made an attempt to fix those glaring errors. If this happens, your supervisor is at fault, I fear: they should have picked up on these problematic elements prior to submission.
Hindsight is a great thing... I can write out these explanations because my exam went well. If it hadn't, who knows what I'd be saying. When the time for my exam came, my supervisor and I were waiting outside the building (I arrived far too early, naturally), when it became apparent that there was going to be a serious amount of noise taking place next door to the exam room, due to renovations. Indeed, one friendly office worker came out and warned us that if we were planning to hold the viva there, we might have to do so alongside a virtual construction site. A quick phone call later and the exam was relocated to another office - I am incredibly grateful that my supervisor/examiners didn't attempt to persevere through the noise, or to gamble on the possibility that it wouldn't be so bad; they erred on the side of caution, because it's better to be safe than sorry. Good form, there.
Arriving at the new location, the whole exam began even more promptly than I had anticipated. Very little pomp and circumstance overall - not that I had been expecting the red carpet treatment! - and without nary a prelude or introduction, we were mid-viva. A couple of other points to make regarding the format. You hear of vivas that go on for a long time, but I think this practice is growing increasingly old-fashioned: now, most lecturers are content to conclude the exam after 1.5/2 hours. If the exam wears on longer than that, I wouldn't take that as a bad sign; it may just mean that yours is a longer thesis (nearing 90,000 words, say), or that it's so damn interesting the examiners can't tear themselves away. But 1.5/2 hours is the new average, broadly speaking. They'll have your thesis to hand, along with lots of accompanying questions and notes, so don't be afraid to point or refer to parts of the thesis that are relevant to your answers - it'll be within very recent memory, and it's right in front of them if they need to query something. The external examiner is the chair of the discussion, and will pose most of the questions. It's also good practice to bring a notebook with you. Your supervisor will be listening to everything anyway, so they should have their own notes, but feel free to jot ideas or suggestions down mid-conversation: it's that scholarly habit of taking notes during a conference Q&A to appear diligent (and boost recall, obviously).
I won't bore you all to tears with a blow-by-blow account of the discussion, but I can confirm that yes, everyone I spoke to was right about their predictions for the viva: it's impossible to predict (that much we know now, anyway). None of the secondary literature or theory that I had looked at in anticipation of the viva came up (none of it - and had I endeavoured to bring it into the conversation, it wouldn't have worked). Luckily, since submitting my thesis I had made the decision to read every Faulkner novel (and most of the short stories) once more, so that they were fresh in my memory for the day. This is not something I was advised to do, I was told there was no need - but I felt that it was the most satisfying and enjoyable way of refreshing my knowledge about Faulkner. Call it a post-thesis victory lap. I didn't expect to be asked so much (almost exclusively - almost to the extent that my thesis faded into the background) about Faulkner's primary texts; I expected that my methodology, theory, and argument would be unpacked, and that I'd have to justify each decision I made in the composition of my thesis. Not so: the exam was all about Faulkner, forming connections between his texts in one breath, and pitting them against each other in the next. This was challenging - a post-viva headache is almost inevitable - but it's also something I was far more willing to discuss than the ins and outs of my theoretical framework.
Following this discussion, I was asked to leave the room, whereupon they would form their final conclusions and call me back in. I was asked, too, not to wander far, because apparently, they lost one PhD candidate that way a few years back - he went for coffee and disappeared into a black hole or something. At this point I was just glad to have the exam over, and I thought that it had gone well. The start had been rough (the first, most difficult question, was a little Charlie Brown - "Good grief"), and at the end, they pointed out a number of errors and parts which they felt needed expansion. But, apparently, none of it was enough to keep them from awarding me the most positive result possible: 'Award: No Corrections Needed.' To have put all that work in, for years, and to receive that kind of result, was, and is, hugely satisfying - a true vindication of my ideas, my hard work and perfectionism, and my love of Faulkner.
I hope that you've gleaned a little insight into the viva voce exam with this entry - if you have any questions, do let me know, though in terms of tips I think that it's hard to generalise. A lot of it depends on which extern you get, so my advice would be to start with that: it's one aspect of the exam that you have considerable control over, because an extern can't really be nominated without your say-so. People will tell you, prior to the viva, that it'll be fine and that there's no need to worry - but you won't feel that way about it until it's finished, I think (similar to any other exam). And even though I didn't make use of any theory or secondary literature in my viva, and I wasn't quizzed about any of it, that's also due to the fact that my thesis is a single-author thesis (a rare entity, these days), and thus the conversation is almost inevitably funnelled down to that single author. If you cover multiple different authors or periods in your thesis, the conversation won't be as concentrated, I think, and will branch off in various directions (which may work to your advantage, as you can redirect the conversation more easily). It was still worth reading that secondary literature and theory for my own peace of mind, too, so I wouldn't neglect additional reading, but certainly, in English Studies anyway, it's the books and films that first grabbed our attention (and your examiners', surely), so prioritise those core texts.
