Dissertation Diaries: Back to Square One

Hi! I hope you’re all doing well and you had a pleasant week and a lovely weekend. It’s been a pretty decent week, aside from catching a cold and feeling the pressure of uni a lot more than usual. I enjoyed a third date which was lovely (again gin fuelled), plus I spent time with my family and got reading done.

Considering these posts are essentially mini diary entries, I’ll be honest with you. The whole “uni is great and I’m loving every moment of it” bubble I’d grown used to in first and second year has well and truly burst. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t think of anything I’d rather do and I’ve loved exploring a subject I’m passionate about, but it’s pretty stressful right now, making sure I’m on top of uni reading, I’ve got some sort of idea for my December and January assignments and I get my dissertation underway.

My plan was to get a significant amount of it done, just so I’m not stressing when I have three modules next semester, but (of course) an obstacle has been presented!

This obstacle came last week, when I finally got my dissertation feedback. The feedback was good, don’t worry. It just got me confused on my direction. I’d picked a subject I thought was straightforward but, on my feedback, I realised there’s so much I could write it’d well surpass the 8,000 words expected!

So this has thrown a bit of a spanner in the works! I won’t need to restart my dissertation by no means, it’s just picking through what I’ve already written and seeing what’s relevant, where I can go with it and what’s best left out. I’m going for a meeting next week with my dissertation advisor, so it’ll be good to talk it through it with someone.

I’ll admit, I got upset with my mark for this proposal. I didn’t think it deserved more, but it was a bit of a defeat to know that I could get (and have got) better marks. Of course, this is only 10% of my overall mark so I’ve got the dissertation to redeem myself…it just panicked me a bit. I’ve thought it all through a lot since and I feel better now, I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with my dissertation but I know I’ll get to where I want to be soon.