What advice do you have for the night before a PhD viva?
It’s the night before your PhD viva (a letter to me from me; me to you)
You have prepared in all the ways that felt helpful and useful to you (having Word read your thesis aloud, refreshing your memory on relevant papers, tabbing your thesis, making notes to yourself where you might want to have bullet points).
You have a bag packed with everything you may need in the room for the viva, including sensory toys, your thesis, a water bottle + Liquid IV pack, pens, Burts Bees, highlighters, laptop, laptop riser, battery pack, chargers.
You will grab a ritual coffee and sandwich on your way into the faculty where your viva is taking place because it is a signal to your body that there is familiarity to be found amongst an extraordinary day.
Treats are being delivered to the faculty for the post-viva celebrations and your friends are supportive and present during the entire lead up week and there will be balloons.
In this moment though, in bed, staring into the darkness, you are feeling emotions a mile a minute. You have responded as best you could to your changing needs throughout the last few days - like not listening to an audiobook or music because you’re feeling overstimulated or having let yourself cry yourself into sleep during a spiral or asking for help taking things off your plate.
Because you know when you feel better, you do better.
You know deep down you know the work, you know the words you wrote, you know the knowledge you have and you contributed to. Swirling anxiety may hide that confidence and awareness on this evening, but it doesn’t take it away. It doesn’t make it any less true.
There is an unwavering sense of pride as a through-line through the mile a minute feelings. So much work has been done to get to this moment. You did the projects you wanted, to the best of your ability with the resources and bureaucratic restrictions you had. The work you set out to do, the work that you were interested in creating, is done. Hold onto that truth.
Tomorrow is not a conversation to trick you or catch you out. Tomorrow is a conversation about what was accomplished and what could have gone differently. Tomorrow is about what changed and what stayed the same throughout the time. Tomorrow is about who you are as a person impacting the work you did. It is also about how to communicate the work and the vehicle you are for it. It is, hopefully, a playful conversation about contribution and accomplishment.
I believe in you.
Til next Sunday,
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