Dissertation Tips & Tricks

It's that time again! You're doing your first draft of your dissertation, and you've ran out of steam (or you haven't really wrote much). I was at the same point last year, and I was also living away from university so getting books from the uni library was a bit of an issue. I didn't think my dissertation would get me an amazing grade, but low and behold I graduated with a 2:1! Here are some tips on how I wrote my dissertation:



Finding quotes
In my last year of university I commuted from Birmingham to London three times a week in my second term. I took library books each week and wrote down relevant quotes with the page number, author, and all of that referencing stuff. I'd also note down why this quote was relevant and what I could relate it to, so my thoughts weren't lost. I didn't read the books on the train home, because I just wanted to zone out and wanted to turn off my uni brain. Which leads me to my next point...

Take a break
I don't mean a quick one week trip to Amsterdam! I mean take a day off from working on your dissertation. I'd just hang out with friends, go shopping, anything to take my mind off of it. I'd feel so much better the next day. I would have all of this motivation to write once I'd had a relaxing day off.

Writing in sections
When I was in school they always told us to think of your essay as a skeleton, meaning a basic structure of an essay. For example, a beginning, the middle bits and a conclusion. When it's a dissertation it's a lot more difficult to do. You should talk to your supervisor about what needs to be included, for example, does your course require you to have an abstract section? I would create new Word documents for each section that I could save and edit and come back to. I made a document titled 'Dissertation', and after each section was completed I'd add it into this. It was easier for me to have the sections separated that I could easily edit and add to, instead of scrolling through countless pages on Word.

Plan your week
What are you doing tomorrow? That's right, you're going to write 1,000 words of your dissertation!

Referencing
I wish I could stress how important this step is. It is so important to reference every quote and book you use, and correctly too. I made a separate Word document (titled bibliography in all caps) and whenever I read a book that was relevant to my topic, I Harvard referenced all the books, websites and anything else that I had used, This way I wouldn't have to do it at the end of my dissertation. There are loads of websites that will referencing books and websites for you, Neil's Toolbox was the one I used.

See your supervisor
I only managed to see my supervisor about three or four times before handing in my dissertation. Whenever I emailed him queries about my dissertation he'd never reply, which was really frustrating so I had to email the main dissertation supervisor guy and complain. He eventually saw me and each meeting was really refreshing, it kept me on track of what I was arguing about and made me think of other relevant ideas that I could incorporate.

Get snacks
Surround yourself with snacks, the healthy and the bad kind. I am the type of person who will stop mid-way through a sentence and look at the fridge and in the cupboards, then come back to my laptop, and look on Pinterest to see what I can make with whatever's in my fridge. If you have all of your snacks ready you won't be doing what I did!

Do you have any tips for writing a dissertation? Let me know in the comments below!

Jenny xo - Follow me on: Twitter / Instagram / Bloglovin