Since I finished my dissertation my biggest time sink has been listening to podcasts. For some reason, I download the entire series of podcasts and work through them one at a time until there are no more. It’s a way of relaxing. It’s also a way of getting information quite easily. In London, I hardly ever leave home without the iPod whilst in Switzerland due to my driving I can’t listen to podcasts when traveling by car.
My dissertation had been finished and ready to print since yesterday afternoon but it’s today that i finally printed out the entire document for handing in to the university for assesment. it’s 10,800 words for some of the most highly produced work I have ever done. It feels good to have handed it in and never to have to worry about it. Many of the others have handed in the work and it’s going to be celebrated tomorrow although the prospect of spending my first real day of freedom hung over does not appeal to me therefore I’m planning on not drinking.
Those words were magic, a writer can expect to review his work over a hundred times. That so many times. Can you imagine going through something one hundred times? By the end, you’re going to go mad. Actually, when I’m working on video it’s not unusual for me to watch the same five minutes 20-30 times till I’m satisfied it’s perfect. I’ve been applying that procedure to my dissertation which is why I still haven’t completed it.
I’ve been talking to a lot of people and there is hardly anyone that seems to take the re-write seriously. Most people see the writing phase as the end of the work. There’s a secret I’ve been hiding for some time now. Re-writing gave me a twenty percent boost in grades. That’s the difference between merit and distinction. That’s the difference between a 2:1 and a distinction for the dissertation. Now take into consideration that the dissertation is worth 45 credits out of 120 for the year.
Being at the stage I’m at, and having discussed the work with the tutor there are three things I must make sure to do before handing in the work. The first task is uniformity. I need to go through two or three sections and make sure that I tie them into the overall structure of the dissertation work. It’s meant to flow from one section to another. That’s something I’ve got to work on.
I’m almost done with uni but it’s so hard. I’ve been working on and off on three projects now for at least three weeks and I’ve spent so much time on these projects that today I finally met my saturation point so I left the computer behind and dropped down to the bar for a drink or two and for company. There were only a few people watching a football match and no media students from my year.
There are about nine days left before the deadline and I’m up to revision five of my dissertation and I’m feeling fairly happy about it. i’ve spent two days working off the printed copy before transferring these changes back to the electronic version. I’ve got almost everything I wanted to do done for today. The next step is to get all the graphics, tables and the bibliography in order. In this detail alone I may expect to spend two or three hours if things go well.
Last night I was feeling good about how my dissertation was going so I got my shoes on and walked to the cinema, feeling good about what I had achieved in the day. I went from my dissertation being a collection of words on the computer to it being printed out for visual inspection. What I found as I looked through the thousands of words I have written is that I am quite happy with the way it’s going and thought that I’m going to meet the target date for the handing in earl, if everything goes well from here on.
Spending almost all of the time when you’re awake to complete your dissertation is hard, especially when you slept no more than six hours after a good night out. I’ve spent almost all the time I’ve been awake working on my dissertation and it’s progressing well but there is still work to be done and although sometimes I feel good at other moments I feel like it’s never going to be completed.
At the moment I’m re-reading the dissertation and going through every paragraph individually to make sure that the content is good. It’s currently floating at about 9900 words and I’m feeling fairly confident with the content. there is still work to be done but within the next three or four days I hope to be done with this piece of work. Once more I went walking around the library and I met almost only girls from my course quite amusingly.