For those of you who have just completed your second year of your degree and all you can think about is next year, here is a post that will hopefully calm you down.
I would first like to start with congratulations, you have one more year left! Its your final year of your degree and your faced with a number; 10,000. It might look scary at first but after you dive in its just scary.
Being nervous and scared about your dissertation is a great sign. It means that your degree and your result means a lot to you. So your on the right path so far.
Now all you need to do is to stay focused, organised, optimistic and open minded.
I finished my degree in 2012. When I started my dissertation I was very nervous, so to calm my nerves I created a plan so I knew what I needed to do and how much time I had.
This blog post is not ideas or advice on what you should be writing in your disso or how you should be writing it. I am just passing on advice I was given and iDiyas I picked up through experience, which made the process of writing my dissertation easier and got me the grade i wanted.
1. Shout it out - 'I want a 1st'
The first most important thing i believe is to let your supervisor know exactly what you want.
Be open on the first meeting and let your supervisor know that you want a 1st and thats what your aiming for. Let them know that if you are working at a 2:2 or a 2:1 level, you want to know what you need to do to get to a 1st. Even if you have to move mountains, you are willing to work hard to achieve that grade.
The supervisor is not allowed to tell you what grade level your dissertation is at, therefore letting them know that you only want a 1st they will have to push you until the end.
I remember my supervisor and i where discussing the final amendments i needed to do before i handed in my final draft. Once i amended all that we discussed, i asked her is there anything else i need to do? She then answered it is perfect you don't need to change anything else.
Knowing I initially told her i want a 1st, i was confident when she told me it was perfect, I knew that if it was not at a 1st level she would have told me to do more. Thankfully i got a 1st.
2. Plan Plan Plan!!
When it came to my disso i write down everything i needed to do down to the last dot. You can never over plan. I printed a monthly and weekly calendar i found online and I wrote all the deadlines that where given to me and also made myself sub deadlines for those deadlines.
I know it sounds crazy, however i believed doing this made me calm and focused on what i needed to do.
You can use the organisation tool
Trello to help make organising your work easier.
3. Relationship with your supervisor
When your writing your dissertation, your university will allocate a supervisor to help and guide you along the way. Your supervisor is also the first marker of your dissertation. This means their opinion on you and your work is very important.
I believe the relationship you build with your supervisor will have a big effect on your result.
This was my thought process; if you meet with your supervisor regularly and share the excitement of your research and plan for your work, the supervisor will also become invested in how the dissertation will turn out.
You will be working on this disso together. Even though its all your work, the supervisor will be advising you on what is best and therefore they will feel like its their work also.
If you are meeting your supervisor, ask them questions about the topic, and keep them up to date with your findings and how much time and work you are putting into the dissertation.
Email them drafts at 6am showing them you are waking up early and finishing late. By doing this they will see how much hard work you are putting into your dissertation, which will make you deserving of that 1st.
4. Go the extra mile
Your dissertation is your research. You will not only be graded on your findings and analysis, you will also be graded on how much effort you put.
If your marker sees that you are going the extra mile in each section of your dissertation, then they will see that you take your research seriously, you worked hard to do more and stand out.
How do you go the extra mile? You can do anything that will make your work stand out. Here are some examples of what i did; I created visuals in my research, for example diagrams, graphs and so on.
I got creative in my introduction, in my aim and objectives section i broke down how I will accomplish those aims. I broke down my conclusion section into conclusion and recommendation. So every conclusion had a recommendation right after it.
There are many ways you can go the extra mile and set yourself aside from others. Do some research and see what others have done and change it up to suit you. This does not count as copyrighting if you are only taking ideas from their ideas. You don't have to only look at dissertations on your subject, take some ideas from other ranges of dissertations.
People my disagree and say its all in your work, however in my opinion i think these little things do also help.
Hope this was helpful. If you have any questions i would be happy to answer, you can comment down bellow with your name or anonymously.
Remember it all starts with an iDiya.
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