Dissertation writing
Reading Time: < 1 minute A dissertation is a lot like creating a specialised website. You gather hundreds of bits of information and amalgamate them into a collection of articles.
Today I got an e-mail which, if I agreed to would open a door to a number of events. I went for a fourty minute walk to think about things and my interior monologue brought me to the conclusion that by being stubborn I would gain nothing but regret whilst by agreeing to a small thing I would win back a freedom.
I enjoyed the student life and for a moment by freedom was not as great threfore I found other occupations. Today I was at a comedy night and it was really amusing. I really enjoyed the evening. It’s great to watch comedians bring out the funny things in life for us to laugh at.
Several times I have had to clean the exterior of Airbus 320 and similiarly sized aircraft. You get some really long brushes and firehoses and you spray the plane before you clean it. it’s hard physical work and it’s done between midnight and five am. It’s not a pleasant job.
Now that you know the type of cleaning I’ve done I want to express my deep dislike of cleaners and why. Every single day they pass in the halls and bang around, speaking at the top of their voices when students are in need of sleep. We’re also in need of a feeling of privacy in the form of silence. Every time some idiot walks by talking loud it’s annoying.
Then you’ve got the blocked doors and rooms. They’ve been polishing every floor over the past week so that when everyone who’s had the luxury of going home over the holiday comes home to a clean building. I have to put up with the chemical smells and the blocked paths. Imagine going to a door and waiting for three or four people to finish their work. Others polish the floor and you have to go another way.
Today I’m angry because of the cleaners. They decided to polish the floor whilst I’m doing my laundry. The clothes have finished being washed and they’re currently waiting to go into the dryer but that can’t happen until the floor dries, in two hours.
Why can’t they carry a warning, why can’t they do it at the time when the laundry room is closed. It annoys me that everything has too be done during the day when it’s most inconvenient rather than at night when out of service. I hate the 9 to 5 mentality whereby convenience is destroyed for the everyday user.
Why today, why now?
Tired of communal life.
I love working on my own projects, where I rely on no one but myself but occasionally I’m lucky enough to have no choice but to work with other people. It’s at these moments that I learn more. I learn about team scheduling and teamwork. I also learn about delegation.
I’m not that good at it yet but I’m learning. Anyone working as a producer or director needs to learn that job and some are better than others. The recent myspace and Magician audition projects I worked on saw some good producers in charge. As a result, the project was good.
Recently I’ve had to be a co-producer with someone else and I was asked what jobs still had to be done and I had to think about it before I could delegate the responsibility. I finally found some methods of delegating responsibility, therefore, I’ll have more material to choose from when it comes to editing.
The project has to be finished by Monday because Tuesday I’ll be back in London with a three thousand word essay on technological determinism to hand in. On the Monday following that I have a presentation on digital content. I’ve been thinking about that concept and I think I’ll be able to produce a good product.
There are many things I have done in the past but having a barbeque at five am whilst the birds are tweeting and the sun is rising is not within my normal realm of experiences. It was nice, felt more like the end of a festival night than anything else.
The party took place at a friend’s place along the Metropolitan line. We arrived at about 7 pm and that moment everything about the party was normal, all the usual features, barbeques, people, drinks and more. Not that many people ate much at the beginning of the night, preferring to socialise instead.
At the end of the night when most people were responsibly going to bed we decided to have a barbeque. It was a mission at first. We had to find out how to open the garden door. It had been locked therefore we could not go out through one door and had to get another one. After this, we had to struggle to find the fire lighting blocks. Finally, we lit the blocks and now it was time to wait for the fire to be warm enough.
By this point, the birds were tweeting more and more excitedly as the sun was rising. As the blue of the sky started to appear our fire was warm enough for the steaks. It took a little time to cook with improvised tools. The food was finally ready and those steaks were good. It doesn’t end there
A popular phrase was “there’s plenty of meat left in the fridge”, resulting in some turkey being fetched and cooked. The pieces were thicker so aluminium helped speed up the cooking process Once we had eaten this it was time for bed for my friends whilst I decided to go home on the tube.
There was just one problem, the tube station was closed and there was no indication of when it’d open. You can imagine my joy at the thought of waiting for them to open. It didn’t matter though, I walked back. It was actually a nice walk. No one in the streets except the occasional post worker. The air was nice, felt like a proper summer morning.
Finally, I was home, having no special need to go to sleep quite yet I stayed up for a little longer. By around 8 am I was asleep. It had been an interesting night.
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. That’s a large enough portion that if you create a good piece of work your grade will increase and your degree may be worth more.
I’ve been talking to people, taking an interest in their work practices and this is what I’ve found. Most people are around the 5-6 thousand word mark whilst four or five are completed. One person is up 23,000 and must cut down on what’s written. Most of these people aim to write from 1-3 thousand words a day and rarely go to see their supervisor. As a result, they’re relying on luck more than other factors.
Luck’s great but when you’re at home and your parents ask, “so how did you do?” the answer won’t be “stop asking me”. Instead, it’ll be. You’ve seen my work, you’ve seen the time and effort I’ve put into it, now let’s just wait and see whether it’s paid off or not.
Of course, pleasing your parents is always rewarding but there’s another motivation. The better the dissertation the more useful it may turn out for when you’re looking for work. Twice I’ve found work thanks to my website… don’t do much for that.
Last year I listened to a journalist and he told the students taking one course to focus their dissertation on a topic that would help them gain employment by demonstrating their in-depth knowledge of a topic, for example on conflict within one region.
It’s 0130am and I pushed myself today. I didn’t feel like writing, I forced myself. I wasted quite a bit of time but whilst I review my results section I can write the key points and write my conclusion according to that section.
Remember, people don’t want to keep flitting back and forth to understand what you mean.
goodnight.
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Romans? Anything on Gibbon? I may be the only person in the entire world who’s reading him right now — and loving him.
http://www.main-vision.com/richard/romans.html is what I wrote about the Romans