Tips for confirmation

Catherine Roberts

On the day of your confirmation, you’ll give a presentation on your proposed research, answer questions from your audience, and finally, have a meeting with your supervisory panel. What can you do to prepare for the big day?

Don’t stress.

Confirmation looks like a mountain beforehand and a molehill after. Have a plan for managing stress, like regular exercise, healthy eating, and time for relaxation. If you feel your stress getting a little high, CAPS is there to help! You can book an appointment to talk about stress with a counsellor. They also have a range of workshops for mental health and wellbeing, including the ever-popular Midday Mindfulness sessions

Plan to plan and then plan some more.

Remember that confirmation is about affirming that you are ready for the rest of the journey. Showing you’re ready is about showing that you have a Plan A, Plan B… Plan Z! Remember to demonstrate at each stage of your written report that you have a SMART plan. Prepare by thinking about what might be troublesome and what you can do to fix them. For example, what if you struggle to recruit enough participants to answer your survey? Perhaps you’ll need to try another method of recruitment. Or maybe your survey is too long or asks questions that are too intimate. Demonstrate to your supervisory panel that you’ve thought about the possibilities.

Be humble.

There’s a lot you won’t know at pre-confirmation, and that’s okay! There’s literature you won’t have read, practice in methodology you won’t have, and questions you won’t have thought of yet. You’re not a professor and no one expect you to be that! Acknowledge the places you still have to grow and accept your weaknesses. It’ll make you more resilient to critique and helps make you a better scholar overall.

Check all the boxes.

There are a few steps to preparing for confirmation. If you’re unclear the Graduate research hub has a handy guide to preparing for confirmation which lists all the steps. If you need support or have further questions, remember the Graduate Research Team for Arts is on the Ground Level of Babel and take walk-in enquires from Monday to Friday, 9am-5pm. You can also email to make an appointment at arts-gr@unimelb.edu.au.

Practise your presentation.

For my cohort, I (and another PhD student) prepared a couple of practice sessions a few weeks before confirmation for all the first-year PhDs. When you’re presenting, you need to show everyone how interesting your topic is, including people who don’t know anything about your field. It’s much easier presenting at confirmation when you’ve practised with friends. It’s also a great opportunity to learn more about your peers’ work. Finally, your friends will help you to see bits that can be improved. Everyone in my cohort found the practice sessions to be the most helpful part of preparing for confirmation. So set a date, grab some snacks, and get practising!

Build a strong foundation with your supervisor.

Your supervisor can be a great source of help for preparing for confirmation. They might have copies of old confirmation reports to give you an idea of the structure. Or check out a suggested outline from the University of Queensland here! Also be sure to ask for specific advice and make sure you’re both clear on what needs to be done. They have a lot of experience with supervision, so if in doubt, defer to their expertise.

Flag your written report.

After the presentation you’ll have a meeting with your supervisory panel. Before the confirmation meeting it’s useful to ‘flag’ your confirmation document with the sections that have key details. Your supervisory team may ask you further questions, so having information at hand can be useful. You can also use this time to ask them about their expertise. If there’s an area in the literature that you’re unsure about, they might know a good starting point.

Be selective

In the confirmation, both the written and spoken dimensions, it’s important to be picky. You shouldn’t present all the literature to your audience, just the key bits they need to know for everything else to make sense. You can always bring up the other literature during question time. You also don’t have unlimited words for your report, so acknowledge the areas that you will need to expand later.