First Draft | Dissertation Series

I can't believe how quickly time has passed that I'm now writing about my first dissertation draft. When I first started this point felt like one I would never reach, yet here I am about to share it with you!

Making A Start

When you start with a blank page getting to this point seems like such a long time away. A good thing to remember is that's how everything starts, instead of letting it be daunting, let it be your canvas for creativity. Once you begin typing you will soon realise how much you have absorbed from researching your topic area. I was so surprised how easily it flowed from my finger tips.

Help with Writing

A good tip I found was to insert all the pieces of secondary and primary research you wanted to include, the message you want to get across from that paragraph or subchapter. This makes it clear what information you have and what you are trying to make a point of, this helped me to stay on track. I can often find myself going on and not actually saying what I intended. 

I also often assume everyone knows what I am going on about. One thing I think was useful was getting people to read it who don't study your topic. If they don't understand something, you've done something wrong. Everything needs to be explained because different people are on different levels of knowledge. Whoever the marker may be you want them to have a full understanding. You will gain higher marks for breaking it down and teaching them something which they didn't know or weren't aware of. Proof reading is also advised to notice mistakes you may miss such as grammar, spelling etc. The amount of mistakes I got back from my family members were astonishing and they would've gone by noticed if it wasn't for a new set of eyes.

Manchester Phase Bank is the best tool I have used to date. It helps you formulate sentences in an academic way. It has multiple ways to help your sentence structure, there is only so many times you can use "this suggests" before you go up the walls. 

Refine

The next two weeks (well just under by the time this goes up) require me to refine my document. I will be taking on all the feedback I've been given in order to improve on highlighted areas. This is really important to ensure you are in the word count, cut out points which aren't deemed relevant to ensure your study is perfection, or at least pretty darn close.

Make sure whoever is proof reading your work tracks changes or if on a paper version writes an explanation so you can see where you went wrong to change the actual version.

That is basically where I am at, I'm thinking of doing a video to go through it and show it to you when I am done, would you all like that? Think it would be a nice way to finish these dissertation posts and bring everything together.