Being a good few months past the (dare I say it) trauma of undertaking a dissertation for my English Language and Literature BA, I thought it might be handy to write down lessons that I personally learned from this process. These are completely personal to me, and therefore obviously will not apply to everyone. Maybe if you are a student who tends to suffer with self-doubt about your writing, especially academic writing as I did, then these tips may resonate with you, and therefore may be worth taking into account when considering how to go from 0-10,000.
2. Take advice, but trust yourself. Ironic because here I am, giving advice. This is something that may not apply to everyone, but it's definitely something I would say to myself, retrospectively. Looking back, I took everything, everyone said as gospel, and I advise against this, especially if the advice isn't coming from academics. If you are being directed away from where you ultimately want to be with your project, think twice before assuming it is the best option.
3. Try not to compare yourself to those around you. This follows on from the tip above. It's very easy to listen to everyone around you when you're constantly comparing yourselves to them. Naturally, comparing yourself to your peers can be helpful to an extent, perhaps as a way to motivate you. But if you do this as a way of constantly proving to yourself that neither you or your work is up to standard, it's pointless and detrimental to your proactivity as well as your mental health. In terms of marking, you are marked on your own voice. It's so different to A-Level, where your writing style and content has to fit certain, specific criteria to attain the top marks. Instead with a dissertation, it is more important to engage in the conversation surrounding your own chosen topic, and if you can, being able to find something to contribute to that.
4. Take breaks, exercise, eat well, sleep (look after yourself as much as you can). The dissertation stress/anxiety really kicked in from around January (my dissertation was due in May, which is similar to other universities in the UK). The long days in the library began probably around this time too. In turn, my ability to practise most forms of self-care went out of the window. I have friends who, in a super productive way, dealt with this pressure by making sure they fit in a gym session. If I were to rewind time and alter my approach I definitely would've made sure I exercised more. I found it so easy to get myself into a rut consisting of ultimately nothing much more than Netflix of an evening. That's fine, and definitely needed sometimes, but perhaps in moderation. As for sleep, many of my friends tended (like most students) to find themselves doing all-nighters in the library towards deadlines. Many of them said they worked better under pressure, and that's obviously not for me to judge, but studies have shown the link between sleep and student productivity, and in my experience, getting a good night's sleep delays the (albeit inevitable) burn out when deadlines are approaching.
5. Limit the amount of people you ask to proof-read. I guess this kind of relates to the second tip as well, but is more relevant to when you are nearing the end of the process. The point at which you are literally eating, sleeping and dreaming dissertation. Anxiety is real at this point. Which is why, of course, it can be beneficial swapping dissertations with friends, having them critique your approach, as well as correcting any spelling/grammar mistakes you have overlooked (inevitable after reading the thing about about a million times). But each proof-read dissertation will come back completely different, because everyone differs in their approach to essays, in so many different ways. With an English degree especially, there are numerous different ways to write an essay, and that's without also including the sense of individual voice that a proof reader may choose to employ in your dissertation. I found that it was easy to lose my own sense of voice due to this, through no fault of anyone else's apart from my own, and something I think I was probably marked down for. I think it is your role, as the author of your work, to be strict and only apply changes if you really think they should be made. This might seem blindingly obvious but it wasn't to me, so I assume it won't be to everyone.
6. Get an external hard drive OR write your work on Google Drive (!). This is IMPERATIVE and not even worth questioning. I've had a few friends now who've lost work along the way due to their laptops deciding to take it upon themselves to explode for no reason, without their work being backed up. This. Is. So. Important. And it can be heartbreaking. This applies even if you are working from a library computer and not your personal one. In my first year there was a power cut in the University library, and I can't bare to imagine the pain of the students who had lost the work they'd put so much time and effort into. It's just not worth the risk. I use an external hard drive to put everything from my laptop onto, and I would recommend this but it's not the cheapest way. The free, and most easy way to do this, is by using Google Drive, which saves your work as you write.
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| My art A-Level piece which inspired me to later write about body hair in my Dissertation. |
1. Trust your topic. There's no way I thought I'd be doing a dissertation on the subject of women's body hair in Western Popular Culture in my third year of an English degree. Initial topics that come to mind include projects on Dickens, Milton, Woolf, or Brontë. Being far from your typical English student, the thought of spending a year tirelessly researching any one of these (albeit exemplary) authors makes me want to literally fall asleep. So my decision to trust my instinct and to steer away from what I thought I 'should' be doing, is something I would recommend to everyone doubting themselves, honestly, no matter how wacky the idea is, there's probably some scope for academic commentary. This obviously depends on the amount of trust that your department is willing to put into you, and it also helps to have trusting, and open-minded supervisors, which admittedly, are both things I was fortunate to have. But the point still stands, you do not want to (completely) burn out by the end of first semester, so do something that genuinely interests you. Other alternative subjects that peers wrote about included Beyoncé and Lord of the Rings.
3. Try not to compare yourself to those around you. This follows on from the tip above. It's very easy to listen to everyone around you when you're constantly comparing yourselves to them. Naturally, comparing yourself to your peers can be helpful to an extent, perhaps as a way to motivate you. But if you do this as a way of constantly proving to yourself that neither you or your work is up to standard, it's pointless and detrimental to your proactivity as well as your mental health. In terms of marking, you are marked on your own voice. It's so different to A-Level, where your writing style and content has to fit certain, specific criteria to attain the top marks. Instead with a dissertation, it is more important to engage in the conversation surrounding your own chosen topic, and if you can, being able to find something to contribute to that.
4. Take breaks, exercise, eat well, sleep (look after yourself as much as you can). The dissertation stress/anxiety really kicked in from around January (my dissertation was due in May, which is similar to other universities in the UK). The long days in the library began probably around this time too. In turn, my ability to practise most forms of self-care went out of the window. I have friends who, in a super productive way, dealt with this pressure by making sure they fit in a gym session. If I were to rewind time and alter my approach I definitely would've made sure I exercised more. I found it so easy to get myself into a rut consisting of ultimately nothing much more than Netflix of an evening. That's fine, and definitely needed sometimes, but perhaps in moderation. As for sleep, many of my friends tended (like most students) to find themselves doing all-nighters in the library towards deadlines. Many of them said they worked better under pressure, and that's obviously not for me to judge, but studies have shown the link between sleep and student productivity, and in my experience, getting a good night's sleep delays the (albeit inevitable) burn out when deadlines are approaching.
5. Limit the amount of people you ask to proof-read. I guess this kind of relates to the second tip as well, but is more relevant to when you are nearing the end of the process. The point at which you are literally eating, sleeping and dreaming dissertation. Anxiety is real at this point. Which is why, of course, it can be beneficial swapping dissertations with friends, having them critique your approach, as well as correcting any spelling/grammar mistakes you have overlooked (inevitable after reading the thing about about a million times). But each proof-read dissertation will come back completely different, because everyone differs in their approach to essays, in so many different ways. With an English degree especially, there are numerous different ways to write an essay, and that's without also including the sense of individual voice that a proof reader may choose to employ in your dissertation. I found that it was easy to lose my own sense of voice due to this, through no fault of anyone else's apart from my own, and something I think I was probably marked down for. I think it is your role, as the author of your work, to be strict and only apply changes if you really think they should be made. This might seem blindingly obvious but it wasn't to me, so I assume it won't be to everyone.
6. Get an external hard drive OR write your work on Google Drive (!). This is IMPERATIVE and not even worth questioning. I've had a few friends now who've lost work along the way due to their laptops deciding to take it upon themselves to explode for no reason, without their work being backed up. This. Is. So. Important. And it can be heartbreaking. This applies even if you are working from a library computer and not your personal one. In my first year there was a power cut in the University library, and I can't bare to imagine the pain of the students who had lost the work they'd put so much time and effort into. It's just not worth the risk. I use an external hard drive to put everything from my laptop onto, and I would recommend this but it's not the cheapest way. The free, and most easy way to do this, is by using Google Drive, which saves your work as you write.
The feeling of having completed such a large project (probably the biggest you've ever done), is worth all of the pain... I hope this helps & good luck!
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