That one little word that fills every third year with fear – dissertation. The longest piece of University work for most people usually comes in at around 10,000 words, and is the third year hot topic of conversation. Going into the library these days’ means you’re likely to be hit with a strong smell of coffee and panic with the underlying noise of the hum coming from furious keyboard typing. Gone are the days of first year, where venturing into the library was reserved for the exam period only, and of second year when you stumbled in a couple of times a week if you were feeling really keen. Now as a grown up and intellectual third year, you are in the library more or less every day of the week. Even weekends are not free from the occasional library trip. Basically, the library has become your new best friend, and you’re united against your common enemy – the dissertation.
The purpose of a dissertation is to show how you have been able to use your knowledge to research your proposed thesis and come to an informed conclusion. This will be your final piece of work that shows how the previous two years of hard work at University have moulded you into the young intellect you are today. A shining example of all those hard earned brain cells, not to mention the hard earned money spent by our loving parents.
However, this is not usually the case. Dissertations are viewed by most people as a torturous piece of work put in place by lecturers to stop the usual all-night essay cram before deadline day and to make our third year a misery. It’s a piece of work that to us…
1. After a few weeks stops making sense to us, leading us to question why we ever thought it was a good idea in the first place.
2. Means you used the synonym tool on Word far too much, making it sound like you’ve swallowed a dictionary.
3. Where you try and be interesting and merge some obscure book into your work that no-one’s ever heard of. Ever.
4. You slip in an old favourite like Harry Potter or Game of Thrones into your work in the vain hope of being individual – but instead end up sounding like a small child. And not even a very interesting one at that.
5. Makes you slowly but surely lose your mind.
However, the dreaded dissertation doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. It gives you a good excuse to…
1. Make the most of your nights out, they may not be every night of the week like first year, but when they do come around they are some of the best.
2. Become an excellent procrastinator, social media and buzzfeed are more or less needed for basic survival these days.
3. Use the library heating, let’s be honest our houses are freezing and it’s a good excuse to defrost for at least a few hours a day.
Although it seems like a never-ending and unforgiving task, I suppose there is light at the end of the tunnel. Our dissertation is one of the final puzzle pieces to our entire University career and it signals to some extent the end of some of the best years of our life. Dissertations are hardly the most enjoyable things in the world, but when they’re done I’m sure they’ll be something to be extremely proud of (or at least we hope). But even better than that once they’re finished along with end of exams, the summer of graduation will begin and that in itself is something to get you over the dissertation blues.