The most dreaded word...dissertation

One suggestion I would like to make for next year’s students is having dissertation classes in November or December. That way we, the students, can start thinking about what we want to write about and can have time to discuss it with others. The main complaint that I have heard from my classmates is time, we were not given enough time to start planning our dissertation. We knew we had to write it however, none of us knew that it would be this difficult in narrowing our topic and making sure it is plausible. We are all frustrated which showed in today’s class when no one raised their hand that they are confident in their topic. I feel that we had plenty of time last term to do the dissertation classes and we could have been refining our topic during the Christmas break.

Like most of my classmates have stated we have too much on our plate this term with taking on 3 classes and then preparing for our dissertation. Last term we only had 2 classes and it would have been more feasible to have taken the dissertation class then. All of my flatmates for their class had to submit their one page proposal in November, have met with their professor one-on-one and now have their topic approved. In talking to them they know exactly what they are going to write about and feel confident. Whereas I feel like my classmates and I are running around trying to get our topic approved and the dissertation is due in 5months. I know it was stated that we were taking the dissertation class in February however, we should have had it in November or at least been given the option to vote on our preference.

For next year, I hope that my suggestion is taken into consideration and it is stressed early on how difficult writing a dissertation is and for students to start thinking of their topics. I think only in today’s lecture my classmates and I fully realized how specific these dissertation have to be.