Uni: Dissertations...

messiah khan said:
So you've spent 3 years and thousands of pounds getting to this moment, and you can't be bothered? :/

It took me a good 6months of solid work, with the last few weeks regulary consisting of 16 hour days to get my dissertation done.
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I'm not a model student. Oxford would be proud of you.

I've had personal problems, I've been getting so depressed that getting out of bed is now becoming a mission because I don't want to face this course - it bores me, I hate it, I don't like the people on it and I don't want a career in it either.

The best part is, there's several projects running alongside the dissertation, with either equal credits or about 5 less. It's like they're playing down the importance of the dissertation - up until last year it had 5 credits less than one of the other projects! (15 instead of 20).

All I can think of right now is how I want to get out of this horrible place, quit my crappy part time job and do something decent, something that I actually wanted to do. I've realised this degree is a complete mistake.
 
Adam said:
I would have been embarassed to ask for an extension unless I was ill, physically couldn't do the work or had some kind of family problems. You have known about it for long enough, why do you need an extension?

At my uni all the stupid people were getting extensions for "loosing their USB stick" or "haven't had time". Bit of a cheek really, extensions should only be for extreme circumstances.

I thought I left my dissertation late starting in the easter holidays :o
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Totally agree in my 3 years at uni so far I have never had an extension (despite needing them when I leave stuff too late :p), and would be embarrased to ask for one, I have friends that treat there deadlines with an automatic extension on the end because they use them so often, really kinda grinds me.

Also grinds me when people complain about length of dissertation when my 3rd year project report was 12k words, 30 figures, 4 appendices, one of which was my 3-4k line of code program -.-
 
M3G4UK said:
I'm not a model student. Oxford would be proud of you.

I've had personal problems, I've been getting so depressed that getting out of bed is now becoming a mission because I don't want to face this course - it bores me, I hate it, I don't like the people on it and I don't want a career in it either.

The best part is, there's several projects running alongside the dissertation, with either equal credits or about 5 less. It's like they're playing down the importance of the dissertation - up until last year it had 5 credits less than one of the other projects! (15 instead of 20).

All I can think of right now is how I want to get out of this horrible place, quit my crappy part time job and do something decent, something that I actually wanted to do. I've realised this degree is a complete mistake.
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what course are you doing?
 
I handed mine in last week, phew :D Got an exam tomorrow though and I have to go into work @ 5, sod it, I'm calling in sick even though it was rejected as a holiday day :eek:
 
Im incredibly lazy when it comes to dissertations. I had to retake my second year of uni because 2 of the 4 modules were assessed by dissertations, and I left it so late. Kept thinking "Ill get started tomorrow" or "Ill leave it for a bit". Pretty soon, it was evident that I only had about a month to do 2 dissertations on topics I really didn't understand that well, so it wasn't going to happen. So I opted to back out, start again and retake the whole year.

This year (Which is my retake) I only had one dissertation. Again, I was lazy, but I ended up getting it done. It's pretty dire I think, but again, its my weakest module. The other 3 are exam based, which to be honest, I prefer. Just walk in, and apply what you know. No days and days of sifting through research and books.

It's not something I'd advise though. It's very stressful when you realise how much you have to do in such a short period of time. Always best to organise yourself and get the work done as early as possible.
 
when i was at uni i had half mine done at christmas, then the uni screwed me over and had to get an extension until august.

MW
 
I can't beleive how rubbish your dissertations are nowadays.

It was only 8 years ago I was doing my dissertation. It was on artificial inteligence and robotics. It took me a year of work and I ended up with 80,000 words and 160,00 words of code in the appendix's. When I finished it I was proud of what I'd acheived. I'd created something nobody had every done before and I continued my work on after my degree as I felt I hadn't finished my research.

I really can't understand how tutors can justify setting only 8000 words as a supposed to be a culmination of the work you've undergone during your degree. Just prooves you've spent the 3 years dossing.
 
Why say in 80,000 words what you can say in 8,000*? Quantity doesn't equal quality as the oft-repeated aphorism goes. Programming dissertations appear often to be longer because they are explaining the program as they go or detailing previously poorly understood concepts that are required in the proof of concept but that doesn't apply in all areas.

For instance I'm doing law and my dissertation doesn't need to be longer than 10,000 words to state my views and case because the aim is neat, terse prose about a very specific area but with some other degrees you need to do far more in the way of background explanations. It doesn't leave me with a thick tome to read to the grandchildren as a bedtime story but if it is of sufficient quality and proves what I set out to do then why go with extraneous detail?

*nb as I've said programming dissertations often cannot be summarised that much but it is just described a point of principle. :)
 
used to leave it until the end, but we finished our group project (MEng) and handed it in yesterday. Perfect timing with lots of work over the last week and a half, but no all nighters and mad rushes. Got it finished and bound 2 hours before the deadline, and we were all thoroughly impressed with how it looked.

Plus we are pretty sure it's going to get us a first on the basis that the machine is simply sensational, which our tutor thinks so too, and he will be using it a lot when we have left, and probably making money from it eventually :D
 
ArmyofHarmony said:
Physics is less than 6000 words (25 pages max), I wouldn't call it a dissertation as such though
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How about maths? :D

"This margin is too narrow to contain my proof."
 
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