Happy New Year everyone, welcome to 2023... the year of the dissertation deadline! I'm writing this at the end of January so I hope you've had a great start to the year and those of you at university have settled back into the new term. January has been an incredibly productive month in terms of dissertation writing and research. The break over Christmas was exactly what I needed to refocus myself and get back into the right mindset. If you've read the other posts in this series then you'd know that I have a four-phase plan for dissertation writing. Currently, I'm in the middle of phase three which is the writing stage. My focus is to get all my thoughts down onto paper, reading as I go along and building my final bibliography. I'm not too concerned at the moment about the text being perfect because this is just a first draft. March until May is my editing period where I can fine-tune all of my ideas into a slightly more coherent format.
I've made some rather impressive progress throughout January. I've fully completed my introduction, methodology, chapter one on popular culture and globalisation, and complete data visualisation. This term has been far easier in terms of managing my time because I'm only taking two other modules (Terrorism Studies and Peace & Justice After Conflict). Utilising creative data visualisation methods was one of the challenges I faced this month. The variation in qualitative and quantitative data meant I had to adapt my visuals accordingly. I'm yet to find an effective visualisation method for the qualitative data as I want to showcase all 50 responses. This is something I'm in talks with my supervisor about, we're both trying to research the most effective method. My supervisor has introduced me to a software called Voyant that works with qualitative data and produces visuals.
Surprisingly I have found the writing process far more manageable than I initially expected, and have set myself the target of writing 2000 words a week. This may seem like a high target but, I spread this word count across three days of working from home. I tackle it in manageable chunks always supplemented with lots of snacks and a motivational playlist. When I've spoken to some of my friends about their dissertation writing experience, they always speak about the demotivation and lack of passion towards their topic as the deadline gets closer. This is something I am yet to experience, in fact, I feel more passionately about my topic than when I first started back in May 2022. I'm immensely grateful for the support from both of my supervisors, they are incredible and have made the entire process simple and stress-free. I would urge anyone struggling or feeling demotivated to reach out to academic staff because they have years of experience with extended research pieces and are there to help you.
In February's update, I hope to have submitted 25% of my dissertation to my supervisors and be awaiting some feedback. I'd love to go through my responding to feedback process because this is something that's become a staple in my university routine. As always, thank you for engaging in this series I'm so grateful for the endless support.
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