My birthday!

Hello again, sloths!

Right, so you’ve had the serious blog, now it’s time for the FUN BLOGGGGG :D I have SOOOOO much to fill you in on :) Where to begin?? Hmm..let’s talk about my birthday and TOUR TOUR TOUR!! :D

So, the time for tour fiiiiinally rolled around, and it was so much fun! We went to Rimini in Italy, and went by coach; the journey there was around 26 hours (I think), and by the end of it we were all very glad to get off! We drove to Folkestone and got the Eurotunnel to France, and from there we drove through Switzerland and then through Italy until we reached Rimini :) Switzerland was so pretty!! There were snow-topped mountains everywhere :)

ANYWAY, let me finally reveal to you the fancy dress themes I arranged for the cheerleaders :D

Night one was American Indians :)

Night two was army night (football did this theme as well :))

Night three was “ratchet”

Night four was toga night (we did this with American football :))

Whaddya think? :D All the stress paid off! Ooh our Varsity jackets came as well :) They look really good so I’ll try and get a decent picture for you in my next blog :)

Tour was seriously so much fun; we competed for one day, then spent the rest of the time on the beach, wandering around the shops, partying, and generally just having an amazing time :D I’m definitely going next year! All of the girls are buzzing for next year already as well :D

Ooh let’s talk about my birthday; I’m finally 22! It’s so weird, not being 21 anymore…I think I like it…I feel older and wiser! Well, okay maybe not much wiser looool :P My actual birthday was really nice; I celebrated it on tour, and my lovely cheer girls got me a shout out from behind the bar, and I don’t remember too much of the night, so that indicated to me that the night was a success! :P

I honestly feel like the most spoilt girl in the world, though; I’m having so many different celebrations:

Tour

Meal with my Momma

Meal with both of my parents

Meal with my friends from Secondary school

Party with my uni friends and housemates

Plus everyone keeps giving me cards and presents! They've all come as a shock as I wasn't expecting anything! I feel so loved! I’m in such a happy place right now it almost seems too good to be true!

I’m dreading graduating as much as I’m looking forward to it >< My whole university experience has been the best, and I can’t stress to you all enough the importance of making the most of it! Sports teams may not be your thing, but consider joining a society or even starting your own! University really is what you make of it, and I’ve met some of my best friends through cheerleading.

Whilst university is primarily about obtaining a degree, I really feel it’s about developing as a person as well. When I leave the University of Greenwich, I won’t only have a degree, but I’ll have valuable work experience under my belt (from working in the enquiry unit here), leadership and events’ experience (as a result of being Social Secretary of Cheerleading), three years’ sports team participation and an amazing group of friends who I know I’ll have for life.

The moral of today’s blog is that university is what you make of it. Don’t look back on your three/four years and think, “So I have a degree, but I wish I’d achieved more.”

*Boston accent* I love yaz!! I’ll aspeak ta yaz later! ;)

xxx

Dissertation Essentials

Okay, so I only wrote one blog in March, so let me make it up to you with some super-duper April blogs now :)

I have SO MUCH to tell you all!!

Right. First thing’s first: DISSERTATION. So as you know already, I was stressing out and panicking over my dissertation, as quite frankly I had left it until the last minute. I was working right up until the deadline, and although I've finally submitted, I’m well aware that the quality of my work is not as high as I am capable of :( Dissertations vary across schools, and as my friend Kelty (http://gre-kelty.blogspot.co.uk/) has written about her Psychology dissertation, I think it’s only fair that you get an insight into the dissertation process in the Business School.

At the end of your second year, you are advised to start thinking of topics and doing some preliminary research in preparation for third year; TAKE THIS ADVICE!! The more prepared you are early on, the smoother your dissertation will go and the less stressed you will end up.

When selecting your dissertation supervisor, the process in the Business School is completely different from the School of Health and Social Care (Psychology falls under that bracket); instead of writing down who you want, you have a tutorial sign-up. It is down to you to select the tutorial slot online, and whoever the tutor is for that slot will become your dissertation supervisor; the main disadvantage of this, of course, is that if you want a particular person, you have to select their tutorial slot, even if it is at 5:00PM on a Friday afternoon. One thing to note, however, is that after the first term there are no more dissertation tutorials, and you just meet with your supervisor as and when you schedule appointments.

Once back at university in the September of your third year, you begin to finalise your chosen topic and start formulating a research question. In the Business School there are two dissertation “models” you can choose from: Model A and Model B. A Model A dissertation requires the author (you) to actually go out and conduct primary research, process the data and analyse the results. Model B, on the other hand, requires the author to gather and analyse existing research on the chosen topic in order to answer the author’s research question. My dissertation was on corruption in the Philippine government and its effects on health care, education and human trafficking; I chose the Model B approach and this resulted in me reading through well over 40 articles related to my research question – THIS IS NOT UNUSUAL SO BE PREPARED FOR THIS!!

The longest part of the dissertation is the literature review, which (for the Business School) is due before the Christmas break. It is 4,000 words long (3,000 if you are doing Model A), and requires the author to outline a vast number of articles related to the research question and assess how helpful they will be in answering the research question. After the literature review is the methodology; this is where you must select six of the thirty/forty/fifty-something articles in your literature review for deeper analysis (there must be rhyme and reason to your selection – you cannot just choose six at random). You must not only analyse the six articles in their own right, but you must compare them with one another and comment on the differences and similarities in the research methods and findings. Once this is done you can move on to write up your findings. This is a 3,000 word section and is actually one of the easiest parts of the dissertation! By this point you should be very familiar with your research topic, so writing about it is relatively straightforward.

Naturally, you end with a conclusion, and then it’s usually at this point that most people write their introduction! This may seem strange, but by this stage you know what your dissertation covers, and you also have background knowledge on the topic, so writing the introduction is easy.

The best pieces of advice I can give when doing your dissertation are:

• Plan early
• Be organised
• Regularly meet with your supervisor and take their advice
• Choose a topic you are extremely interested in!

I hope all of this helps – please familiarise yourselves with this now so you are less stressed in the long-run!

Don’t say I never look out for you guys! ;)

Until the next blog, folks!

xxx