Category: ADZ5999- CRITIQUE

Now having gathered all my sources and started to write my dissertation i feel at a much stronger point than i did at this point with my research proposal. Despite this it would be nice for tutors to reflect on our progress more frequently than only once before the final submission.

I see one of my key weaknesses as how to structure a dissertation as i have never had to do this before and the support the university provides is minimal to say the least. Because of this i am trying to use my strength of time management to get my first draft finished as quickly as possible so i can focus on going back through the work and re organising it into the correct chapters.

Overall i feel my dissertation is going well as i very much prefer having 15 minutes one on one time with the tutor, rather than having scheduled group times. As i know exactly what i want to write about this benefits me as i have very specific questions compared to someone that hasn’t planned ahead so well.

I feel so fortunate that I got my interviews finished in third term with the deadline on 19th October fast approaching. I knew getting both a dissertation and practical work done was going to be hard; however the reality did not quite hit me how soon the October formative deadline would be. The interviews in themselves only took approximately 40 minutes; however, it was the applying for ethics and finding a time when both the tutors and myself were free which really took up a lot of time.

In third term i also got round to start finding references for the dissertation which i forgot i had done, so this was a nice surprise when returning to work on my dissertation. I would have liked to have got more done over summer; however, with two work experiences one of which in Colombia my spare time was minimal. When returning to Cardiff i worked for 4 days finding references to work into my plan. I much prefer to do this and then writing the dissertation rather than going backward and forward as i then know exactly the structure my dissertation will take.

For my first tutorial i had a whole host of questions that had built up over the previous days meaning i took a little longer within the tutorial than i should have done. Despite this i managed to get all my questions answered meaning i could continue with my work confidently the next day. Using comment boxes and colour coding areas proved a vital time saver and something i will continue to do.

After my 4 days of research i felt a little stuck and queried with my supervisor whether i should just start writing. After discussing this with her we both felt the best way forward for me was to start the writing of the dissertation so this is what i did. I always find the thinking about doing it is worse than actually doing it. The morning i was planing to do the work i woke up early because of the stress to get started; however, once awake still managed to procrastinate for an hour or so.

Because of my in depth plan and having my quotes pre prepared the writing was so easy an rather enjoyable. I knew exactly what i had to do and what the main point of each particular section was so i was able to really get into my flow with it.

By next weeks tutorial i am aiming to have at the minimum 1000 words done of my first draft so i will have lots more questions to ask in the tutorial.