If your viva date is circled on the calendar and your stomach drops every time you look at it, you are in the right place. I am Faryal. For ten years I have sat beside students — sometimes literally in the corridor outside the exam room — while they waited for their viva. Bright, hardworking people who knew their thesis inside out. And still, their hands shook.
Start where you are
You do not need to feel ready to begin. Most of the students I work with arrive convinced everyone else feels calm and they are the only one falling apart. They are not. In a survey I ran with 60 of my own students last year, four out of five said the viva scared them more than any written exam they had ever taken. Fear before a viva is normal. Staying frozen in it is optional.
Calm your nerves
Nerves are physical before they are mental. A racing heart makes clear thinking almost impossible, which is why we start with the body, not with positive thinking. You will find breathing routines here that take ninety seconds — I have watched a student use one in the hallway, walk in, and answer her first question without her voice breaking. There is also honest talk about sleep. The week before your viva is not the time for all-nighters; one MPhil student I worked with moved her bedtime one hour earlier for five nights and told me the morning of her defense felt completely different. Small, boring, doable changes. They add up.
Know the questions
Examiners are less mysterious than they feel. Most viva questions fall into patterns, and once you see the pattern, you can prepare for it. “Why did you choose this methodology over the alternatives?” comes up in some form in almost every viva I have ever heard about. “What would you do differently if you started again?” is another one — and it is not a trap, though it feels like one. The question banks here are organized by thesis chapter, so on a Tuesday evening you can sit with your literature review and practise the exact questions examiners tend to ask about it. Preparation turns the unknown into the familiar.
Practise with mock vivas
Reading about vivas is not the same as sitting in one. A mock viva is a 45-minute practice session run like the real thing: examiner-style questions, no interruptions, then honest feedback on your answers, your voice, and how steady you sound. Afterwards you get a personal action plan — two or three specific things to fix before the day. Students tell me the strangest part is how ordinary the real viva feels after a mock. Your brain has already been there.
Talk to me
If you want to talk it through, message me on WhatsApp. No forms, no pressure. Just tell me when your viva is and what is worrying you most, and we will take it from there.
Chat on WhatsAppConfident Viva is run by Faryal, who has spent ten years guiding students through dissertations, research, and statistics — and who believes a viva should test your work, not your nerves.