PhD Students Don't Know What Comes Next

“Has anyone done the VIVA assessment before? what kind of questions does it ask? Does it actually get super in depth into the discipline of research/the project you're submitting? submitted by /u/flyxingfinxch [link] [comments]”

“As per title, for those who did a supervisor led/pre-defined topic. Starting in the new year and slightly nervous. UK, Social Sciences. submitted by /u/Afraid_Robo_Elephant [link] [comments]”

“Hello everyone! I am aiming for a PhD in the broad area of digital media and communication. I am in the process of emailing professors and refining my proposal. Now there are around 10 professors who have been corresponding with me and each of them are giving different suggestions, ranging from research question refinement to change in methodology. Do I incorporate their suggestions into one single proposal, or do I create different versions for each university? I understand that each university”

“I am 6months pregnant and burnt out. I can’t get myself to prepare for my PhD viva, but I also just want to get it over with. I feel like I don’t even care anymore, but my anxiety is also very high preventing me from actually preparing. Any advice please!! Has anyone been through a viva pregnant particularly in the UK?? submitted by /u/Tired_Hamster [link] [comments]”

“Ciao fellow God’s strongest soldiers, I’ve just got my external and internal examiners nominated (STEM PhD). Could anyone please share what’s the etiquette with the examiners pre-viva — would it be helpful to contact them beforehand and send some supplementary materials outside the thesis like summary slides? Email and introduce myself? Bring home country’s souvenirs (I’m an international)/coffee/cake to the viva itself? Would really appreciate some perspective here as I know that different cult”

“I've just submitted my thesis (In the UK) and to be honest I'm not feeling great about it. The results section is pretty lacking and there's a few questions that I haven't really been able to properly answer. I've struggled a lot throughout. I'd say I've had a higher than average amount of supervisor support, but I've consistently found it difficult to explain myself in a way that other people understand. My supervisor thinks the thesis should be okay but is worri”

“I have recently submitted my masters thesis and I have not received the date for my thesis defence yet. Every time i think about having to give viva and especially thinking if they ask me about my code, it gives me headache. I know most theory part and i know what my code does but the anxiety in me feels i can't answer if they ask me about things i don't know. There were some part i got confused and tbh i took help from AI to solve it for me but i do know what that code does, why and how”

“My real viva is in three weeks, and I had a mock defense with my lab yesterday. I was completely destroyed. I had a really hard time preparing the presentation because I was second-guessing everything, but I didn't realize just how bad it was until yesterday. I was SO nervous, way more than I usually am when presenting. My voice was breaking, but somehow I was still speaking at about 3x my normal speed. My lab basically tore the whole thing apart. My advisor was particularly passive-aggressi”

Context: field of philosophy, external self-funded PhD in Europe Is that a thing? because I am tired of writing what appears to be in circle. Everytime i think i have my research…

“How can I start... I truly believe I will be completing my PhD journey in 3year times. Year passed and I'm there in submitting my PhD thesis stage and next is my public viva voice. I'm there in my 6th year of PhD. I have 3 Scopus indexed papers out of which one is Q1 publication. Wos is there too. I have got distinction in my course work period Worked in ICSSR project as Associate Researcher PPL started scolding me advising me to complete To be honest I lost my interest But somewhere I s”

“Hello, I am new to academia and am currently starting to prepare for finding a research topic, learning academic writing, and eventually writing my research proposal. I honestly have no idea how to track my progress effectively. I will be applying this cycle if I complete everything within next 3months. Field - Humanities (English Literature) I have seen several Excel sheets and tracking templates, but I find them quite confusing. I also tried creating my own Excel sheet, but I got confused abou”

“Hi guys, as the title says my viva is next week and the stress is taking me out. I'm doing a PhD in Health Sciences in UK- I work with mental health and data science. I feel like I know nothing, I have done nothing and they'll see through me. Is this a normal feeling? I am going down a rabbit hole reading about all the negative experiences. I really feel like they'll eat me up and I'll get major, which I don't want to. I've worked really hard, published 5 papers so far fr”

“How come a phd life so overwhelmingly busy? This is what i am doing in August. Preparing for viva in Oct. Working on a co-first author paper. Working on a co-author paper. Received reviewers' feedback for a first author paper, revisions needed. Booking hotels and flights for a 18-day conference trip in Sep (2 conferences). Doing the budgets and documents for the trip. Preparing two conference presentations. Preparing another presentation in Oct. submitted by /u/RandomName9328 [li”

“Hello everyone, I have secured a supervisor for my PhD. However, they want me to "carve my research proposal idea out of their current research". What does this mean? Do they want me to use their idea for the proposal or try and take my current idea and embed it into their research somehow? I'm a bit confused 🤔 submitted by /u/Pretend-Rhubarb-6986 [link] [comments]”

“Hi everyone, I am ugc net qualified in dec 2025 this time I thought of applying for phd I'm preparing a research proposal for a PhD interview in Mass Communication (this is not my final dissertation topic, but a proposal for admission) fro prominent university like JNU "I'm exploring a PhD proposal on how social media audience discussions reshape media narratives using agenda-setting and framing theory in the Indian context. Is this a promising direction?" . I'd ap”

“So I've written a paper where I developed a three stage methodology to extract requirements for my domain. the first stage involved extracting them from the individual studies and keeping them as it were in those studies . After that, I developed some rules to unify them, such as if an attribute appeared in more than 50% of studies, then it was modelled as attribute and in the end, I combined all the unified models for different requirements. Now this is my own novel rules which I developed”

“This is an oldie but goodie. For those new to it, the premise is that you're in an elevator and you have to explain your research to someone before the elevator reaches the next floor. So it has to be short, sweet, and compelling enough that they might consider getting off with you to ask a follow up question. Mine is always a work in progress but right now it goes something like this: I am interested in how we imagine reality through our interactions with objects What's yours? sub”

“My VIVA is NEXT WEEK! (I’m a social scientist) I’ve had a mock viva with my supervisory team which they said I did brilliantly with. My head of department has said she is very confident I’ll do great. But I do not feel prepared, AT ALL! Was there anything in your viva that caught you by surprise? Any tips? I’m panicking, a lot. It’s taken a long time to get here (as it does for anybody getting to this stage of a PhD) and I just don’t want to mess it up. submitted by /u/artificiallyfe”

“I am planning to do phd via university route instead of embassy route of mext. So i read recent works of professors and now ready to write 1 or 2 page proposal along with an email. But dont know how to write such proposal ( done in masters but uncertain about phd. Can anyone tell me do and don't while writing it submitted by /u/PopApprehensive1623 [link] [comments]”

“The day I was supposed to defend my proposal, one of my committee members had to cancel- went into the hospital where he died 2 weeks later. Professionally, I missed him greatly as he was fantastic at quantitative analysis, but also I just really liked the guy. He was so enthusiastic, so supportive. I've never met anyone who explores every rabbit hole as thoroughly as I do- he was that guy. We drove my chair nuts. The department replaced him with someone who signed on to help me finish- I&#3”