I’m under the impression that our blog readers are growing up with me, so I’m hoping this dissertation post will become useful to someone soon! If this only becomes relevant in ten years’ time, treat this as a historical document about the old days when you had to type it all up for weeks yourself. I’m sure you’re enjoying using robotic AI osmosis to transfer your thoughts to a document without moving a muscle. Anyway, here are the tips:
- Get ready really, really early. The earlier you have your topic, the better. You might suddenly be struck with divine inspiration, you might have wanted to do this dissertation all your life, or you might not have a clue where to begin. Whatever place you’re in, try and get your topic generally finalised by the end of your penultimate year.
- From there, begin an organised to-do list. Mine was four (4!) pages long so that I didn’t forget anything, but you might prefer to have larger tasks to tick off. I’d recommend you split it into scheduled stages; I had one for each 2-3 months of work. The first was research, the second was writing the first half, the third was writing the final stage, the fourth was editing and submitting. You can follow a similar structure, but this might vary if you have formal deadlines for chapters at your university.
- Set one day a week that you will dedicate to it. Throughout the year, the dissertation will likely get put to the side. Our tutors said to dedicate as much time to it as any other module, but that’s very unrealistic. If you choose one day each week, you’ll make gradual progress. Prepare to sit back and relax when people forget all about it and panic erratically!
- Have as many eyes on the final submission as you can, but only ones you trust. When you’re about to submit your dissertation and you’re completing final edits, it can be a very sensitive time. You’ll have worked for six months on this project and researched it like the back of your hand. You’ll want help with grammar and spellchecking, but it’s not necessary to receive overly harsh feedback. At that point, you have to trust that you’ve done the topic justice and you’re confident in your abilities. There’s no point in getting stressed because someone who read it doesn’t agree with your argument!
- Make sure your topic has a unique angle. No offence to the people who do this, but there are some topics in sociology that are really overdone. You remember the GCSE English task of delivering a five-minute presentation and everyone chose to talk about social media or school uniform? In undergraduate sociology, it’s all about educational inequalities. It’s fine to follow suit, but it’s imperative that you find a niche somewhere in there. You only need a small angle which makes your research stand out. For instance, you could add a variable, like how educational inequalities vary by age or the remoteness of the area. If I just gave you your dissertation topic for a sociology degree, you’re very welcome. Remember to cite me.
- Email your supervisor for every question you have and maintain a strong relationship. Hint: your supervisor is the one marking your dissertation. Don’t do yourself an injustice by ignoring their emails, not working hard, or being lazy. They’ll be biased in marking; don’t fall for thinking they aren’t. They’re human.
If you’re doing a dissertation next year, GOOD LUCK. It’s a long project but if you care enough about it and work hard enough to do yourself and the topic justice, it might be your best bit of work yet.
