I cannot explain the relief I feel that this week is over! I did my usual day job on Monday and Tuesday, then spent Wednesday revising in the library, and had exams on Thursday and today. I also haven’t been very well and had to put off seeing a doctor until after my exams as I firstly haven’t had time, but also don’t always react well to antibiotics so couldn’t risk feeling even worse and having to sit through my exams.

Thankfully, it is now all done and I’m quite pleased with how the exams went. Not ecstatic, but definitely content. More importantly, I am off to Cyprus in the morning for a few days visiting family who live out there. I can’t wait!

Although we don’t start semester 2 until February, I still have work to get on with as my dissertation now needs to be full steam ahead. I am relishing the challenge of writing my 10,000 word paper because I’ve picked a topic I am really interested in and love reading and researching about.

Here are my key thoughts so far on dissertations:

• choose a topic you have an interest in – its a project over both semesters so you don’t want to get bored and disinterested in what you’re researching and writing about
• set up regular meetings with your tutor – this helps as it provides guidance, support and feedback all the way along
• plan for your tutor meetings – don’t go empty handed expecting them to do everything for you. Have a page of notes and ideas to discuss with them about where you’re at and what you need advice on
• set your own deadlines – be organised and rigid with your writing and set out a month by month plan. As it gets closer to the final submission deadline, revise your plan to a weekly one
• don’t stress about it – most of you will have written 3,000 word essays by this stage and often done so fairly last minute…a dissertation is really 3 (and a bit) of those but completed over a 6 month period (rather than a few weeks) so think of it like that and it becomes much more manageable

Hope everyone’s exams (if you had them) went well. Catch up with you all next week from sunnier climes!