Research Begins...
With the hustle of contracted work it is rare that I find myself in a delightfully sunny garden with little weight upon my shoulders. Yet as I sit here now wearing my *oh so wondrously cool* sunglasses I have taken the chance to begin considering the first stages of my dissertation. Once back at University in September one of my main tasks will be to write my Public Relations dissertation which needs to be in the region of 10,000 words.
Who cares about word counts really? Hitting 10,000 words is easy – give a keyboard to a monkey and with enough dedication those letters will flow, although perhaps not in conventional word structures. Words do not scare me, content does.
The content has to be right and even though this Public Relations dissertation probably doesn’t mean much in terms of academic contribution at BA level, I feel like I need to impress myself. Constantly I spot something in business which I would have done alternatively.
Whilst others swim in a certain direction I often ponder about what it would be like swimming against the current, the current train of thought, the current idea which is so widely established. With so many thoughts running through my mind, actually being given the chance to write a dissertation is an opportunity to shine.
Like most keen writers I often dream of having a book published and writing an academic dissertation isn’t that different. I admire many scientific writers who leap into theory and shape it into something understandable and human. If I could put the same twist on communication theory then that would be an achievement.
Yet after all of this writing I may be over thinking things. The main purpose of this dissertation is to achieve the grade I need in order to find a job.
There is nothing like the present. After chewing through some dissertation ideas online a thoughtful librarian at Microsoft UK HQ offered to assist with research. Today I have drawn up a list of contacts who I will ask to interview this summer ahead of the dissertation and ultimately I hope to have the basic structure of my dissertation this weekend.
It may sound far fetched, even sad that I have bothered to focus on the dissertation at this stage. However this is just the way my mind works. I’m not very good at doing nothing, I must always have something happening and if I get all my dissertation research done before University then when I arrive in Cheltenham all I will need to do is write the thing.
If you are already writing a dissertation or thinking about starting one, then I would love to know how you are finding it:
- Is it easy?
- What is researching like?
- How did you come up with your idea?
- Is writing a dissertation just about the grade?
