Every feeling you’ll experience writing your dissertation
Submitting your dissertation might be most emotional experience ever
I have just submitted my dissertation. (Yay, go me!) I am here to tell you all that, although you may not feel like an end is in sight, it definitely is! Believe me if I can do it, you most certainly can!
However, writing this absolutely monstrosity made me think about the emotional journey that went into getting this 12,000-word nightmare submitted.
So here goes, the stages every third year goes through when writing a dissertation.
Apathy
It’s September, you’re just happy to be reunited with your friends and living in a new house with all your chums. The last thing on your mind is your dissertation.
However, this doesn’t stop all your lecturers banging on and on about it. You tell yourself that there’s no point in going to the preparatory lectures. You’ve got months and months to write something you actually want to, so why bother worrying now?
Worry
Okay, so now everyone else has a solid idea, and you’re still as clueless as you were in September. Your proposal is a blank page. Then suddenly you’ve got a meeting with your supervisor around the corner. This sudden realisation that you have absolutely nothing you can possibly say in that meeting forces you to come up with some lame, last-minute idea.
Calm
You’ve had your meeting, they like your idea, what’s to worry about? Might as well treat yourself to a nice relaxing Christmas.
Anger
You come back to uni significantly fatter and happier after your Christmas break, only to find out all your friends have started to WRITE their dissertations. You have barely even researched what you’re doing. You can’t believe you have wasted your entire Christmas sat stuffing your face with pigs in blankets, while watching Elf for the 96th time. Why, oh, why didn’t you do something?
Confusion
So, you’ve had a few library days to try make sense of what you’re doing, only to find you are now even more confused. You have no clue what’s going on and regret picking this silly topic in the first place.
Disbelief
You cannot believe you have done this to yourself! This can’t be your life can it? How on earth is it April and you still haven’t got anything written down? Surely this cannot be. But unfortunately, is it!
Panic
With weeks to the deadline you are now in complete panic mode. Even thinking about your dissertation makes you feel sick. But it’s also the only think you can think about. How on earth are you going to write 12,000 in 4 weeks?
Worrying calm
The panic has got so strong you’ve had no choice but to go to the library. You’re there at 9 am every day and you’re starting to see some sort of progress.
You’re concerned that the panic level is now so high you’re in a state of shock. That might explain the random crying bouts. But words are starting to appear on paper. Life might be looking up.
Acceptance
Your whole life is staring at a computer screen from the moment you get up to when you go to sleep. Meals are cooked and consumed while somehow also typing or rifling through notes. And with that acceptance comes a torrent of words.
At night you whisper to yourself ‘the end is in sight’ and it might just be true.
Relief
Deadline day!
You have finally made it! By some miracle you are handing in your dissertation and saying goodbye to the thing that has haunted your life for the past year.
You make sure to get some super great dissertation hand in pictures, because what would have been the point in writing it if you don’t tell everyone it’s finally over.
Goodbye 12,000 words and good riddance!
By Charlotte Booth