After the end of the summer exam period second year bio students have three days of dissertation prep. The short course is designed to help you start thinking about planning your dissertation.
The first day was today and we had three sessions. The first was a introduction to the course and information about avoiding plagiarism in your thesis. Avoiding plagiarism is essential and the consequences of not doing so can be pretty serious! We then had a session which was tailored to the type of project we are doing. I am doing an experimental project on the genomics of social organisation in ants, all experimental projects had a session about lab safety. Following this we had a session ran by the departments we will be working in (mine is genetics), we did a few different exercises to help us better understand the marking criteria.
Over the next two days we will have a careers talk, more guidance about writing our thesis, how to meet the assessment requirements and a time management session. There will also be a student panel where we will have the opportunity to ask former third years questions about their dissertations and their final year experience.
Following this week we have a 1000 word report about the background of our individual projects. The idea is it will help us to prepare and gain some background knowledge of our projects before we start them in September.
It’s scary to think that in 6 months time I will have finished the lab work for my project and will be writing my thesis, but I’m looking forward to the experience!
B x
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