At the minute i have about 8 days until the first draft of my dissertation minus the conclusion has to be finished…
A lot done
Whilst i can question whether or not the content i’ve produced so far is of any value or any relevance, in many ways it’s a luxury to be able to ask myself that question. That means that i’ve done something… i’ve written over 12,000 words now totaling 50 pages.
My dissertation is about 65% ‘complete’ which means the finish line is in sight. I’m good with deadlines and i always think i work well under pressure so i’m looking forward to the next couple of weeks because it will mean that i finish my dissertation at long last.
More to do
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though… summer is still a long way off for me. 2 weeks is still a long way off. I’ve a lot of work to do on the dissertation. At least 2 and a half chapters plus i have to work on the presentation and employ the Harvard referencing scheme.
I have about 50 references so far, all just numbers linking to footnotes which contain urls. Converting those in to proper references is probably going to take a full day.
The Plan
As much as i’d like to say there’s a plan and despite the fact i’ve produced one, in reality there is no plan. There can’t be. I’m still prepared to change the structure of my entire dissertation and i will be right up until the last minute. I won’t know what i’m writing about until i’m finished writing. I won’t know how it reads or how many chapters etc… are in it.
That’s just how i write and it works for me. So yes, i’ll produce all the plans in the world if they have to be done to pick up marks, but they mean nothing to me. They don’t even work for me. I can’t write on a topic and not go off topic. There’d be something wrong if i could. Drifting off course is fine in my eyes so long as you can reel yourself back in by the end of the day.
If i start off a dissertation on Social CRM talking about a can of baked beans or something that’s fine, so long as it closes with me thinking about Social CRM and not baked beans. I’m allowing myself to do that stuff now and i’m writing more fluidly because of it. Will it translate in to better marks? Probably not but that doesn’t matter. What matters is i get this done on time, to an acceptable standard.