Bismillahirrahmanirrahim....
"The Viva" workshop organised by School of Graduate Studies, UPM....
What Im gonna say about this workshop is
“The Viva is Horrible!!”…
Everything has been told and storied about viva was horrible!!. Actually they won’t to scare us, but that is the clear picture what happen during the viva is. A lot of reactions, emotions etc..etc starting from waiting for the chairperson called us to enter the room until we know the result of our master @ phD work for the entire of our life.
Before that, I would to thank Dr Vijay and Dr Shameem for a great presentation and informative workshop. Both of them have given the presentation based on their experience; Dr Vijay focus more on process and what happen during viva, he’s full of sense of humor, he also like to play with the psychological manner to see the reaction of student to the viva, but, that is interesting to know-different people different reaction; while, Dr Shameem was focus on the preparation, the do’s and don’ts during the viva.
This is very..very…very interesting workshop and very informative. Who ever didn’t come or registered for this workshop, I can say to them….”you are very unlucky student”. And I can’t wait for tomorrow’s session. When I first come and sit, I talked to my friend what are they going to say for 2 days??, is it too much to know??..it seems like to run a workshop on certain subject related to high tech method or something else that require long time. But, our first expectation was wrong!. Once the presenter start introduced; What is Viva is, the purpose (as a ritual in research area, as candidate development, as a court to defense your work) ...bla..bla..bla…then, we only realize it how important it is.
Dr Shameem said “Im almost sure that the viva has 40% effect your result of research work, that you may defend it, either your work is good enough to give you a Title of “Dr’ for phD or else”. Before this, maybe I don’t really care about the viva, I thought that it’s just like present your final report of your Master or PhD work. But after attending and listening what had been delivered from this first part of “the Viva” workshop, I change my mind to ”please make full effort and concern about how you going to plan and organize yourself to be examined, especially in Viva”. It is not only presenting your IMPORTANT findings, but your attitude as post graduate student, what had been done for several years before. Either you are worthy to be graduate as a postdoc or not.
For the first day session (Session 1-3), it was about to give us an introduction what is Viva is all about, the clear picture about it, what is your supervisor role and what actually your right for certain thing that most of us don’t know. They also told us about do’s and don’ts during the Viva, the preparation for it, what is the process occur during we are waiting for the viva presentation, specifically in UPM. We’re very lucky because we have opportunity to see how the Viva room is look like, first time seeing…im sure most of us will say this…really like a hell, so stressful room, we gonna die!...haha! actually it’s not like that, the GSO try to give the best hospitality for us, to make us calm…less stressful. There is a TV (this is in the waiting room, not in the viva room), breakfast, lunch and sometimes dinner for you, hot water, cold water, etc. Why they serve with dinner also?..because, sometimes the viva take more than 4 hours. Usually, they will be only one student a day to be examined in the particular room, in UPM we have 3 rooms for viva, that means only three person will be examined for that day.
This is something to share with you, Dr shameem storied about her experienced on attending Viva during her postdoc degree, you know what??..she’s crying during the viva. The examiners took 45 min to calm down her to start the viva (wah! Is that so??), luckily the examiners was very polite and gave her some time to start the viva. You know how long it took?..4 HOURS, don’t be shocked!. This is the real thing that we gonna gone through in order to pass our post graduate studies in UPM and other university, not all uni but certain uni. For example, from what Dr shameem said USM doesn’t have viva (correct me if im wrong), UKM not sure, UM I think no, others I forgot..hehe. For the uni that doesn’t has viva, they may have different way to evaluate their student.
The most important thing is, you must have paper that had been published in the index citation journal to support your work during the viva. Have a paper or journal that published in the citation index journal help us in defending your work during the viva. The whole world already accepted your idea, so no other reason the examiner want to argue or not agree about your work, unless your work is new@ novel in your field and they really interested to know about it, then they may ask you more, but…in a discussion manner, not to kill you. In UPM, we must have 2 published papers for master student and 4 published papers for phD student. This is what I’m trying to do and suffered for this whole semester. Feel jealous to my friend who already got published their paper.
Move towards the result of the viva. I think I already wrote about it in the previous entry, and im not going to repeat them again. A lot of information I got from this workshop, I just summarize it here and share with people outside my area, and maybe who don’t have opportunity to have this kind of workshop. There is more interesting session for the next day.
Feel free to read it (^_~)V
(written by me 910pm 14thNov09)
