Things I need to know before my dissertation

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   I am still a fair way off finalising my project but I have learnt throughout this process that one of the most important factors in feeling successful is thinking and planning ahead. If you can picture where your project will be in a month, two months, or a years time, you can start figuring how you can get the results you want within that time frame.

    By thinking ahead in this way, I have gotten a heightened awareness of my inexperience in extended writing. I have never written even a draft for a lengthy dissertation. To prepare myself, I‘ve looked up tips on where people often go wrong, what definitely should be done, and how not to fall into easy mistakes.

    Here are a couple of websites I used:
https://www.oxbridgeessays.com/blog/advice-successfully-writing-a-dissertation/
https://academicpositions.com/career-advice/10-dissertation-writing-tips

    From that, here are a few things I need to improve on in order to produce a dissertation I would be happy with.
  1. Simply get the first draft done with no messing about:                                                                   It will be tempting to perfect each sentence or get bogged down with paragraphs that don’t flow how I want. I cannot let this slow me down or throw me out of the rhythm of writing. It is much easier to write messily, get all the content I want in one place, then go back to rewrite than to attempt to make every line perfect and risk losing momentum and procrastinating having a start point for editing.
  2. Have a time schedule:                                                                                                                     I have seen how planning helps with the project‘s progress. I need to see the dissertation as it’s own project and have a whole separate and more detailed plan for when and how much time I‘ll spend on it. 
  3. Get lots of feedback:                                                                                                                                 Have teachers look over my work who will harshly criticise where I can improve. Don‘t be offended when it comes to criticism and don’t let it take away from the good aspects of my work; if something can be better, why would I not make it better. 

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