Finishing my dissertation!

The past few weeks have been very intense – due to finishing my dissertation! The Geography dissertation deadline

Me about to hand in my final dissertation to the General Office!

is much earlier than for other subjects, which I think actually works out better for us because then we have the rest of the year to focus on our exams. We still get the same amount of time to do it because we start it at the end of second year. Anyhow I’m really happy to be finished! A LOT of time went into it! Here’s a pic of me in the Bennett Building on the day.

My top tips for avoiding a mad rush in the last few weeks would be to do regular amounts of work on it throughout the whole year, and see your dissertation supervisor as often as possible! Mine was really helpful in supporting me, de-confusing me and helping me get unstuck when I wasn’t sure how to proceed. Every dissertation is different so its hard to give specific advice, however try to stick to the time frame that the department give you, like having your first draft ready for after Christmas.

The department is really good in guiding you through the whole process. I am really glad that part of the second year Research Design module is to do your dissertation proposal – as I got a large amount of my literature review done during that time – before summer had even started! Then once I had collected my field data I could work on improving my literature review. I did find that I needed to edit my literature review having done my data analysis, as some parts of it became irrelevant to my research question.

Much thanks to my supervisor and my friends and family for supporting me this whole time! This week has been a week of celebration and now its time to crack on with reading for my other modules, which I will blog about in the near future. If you have any questions about Geography dissertations then let me know in the comments as I am happy to answer!

Caroline