Whether you are deciding the topic for your dissertation next year or writing your final chapter, here are some tips from four Alumni students that you may find helpful! 

James Jjuuko – BSc Psychology with Counselling Theory 

• Get feedback early – Share your work with your supervisor early and often to help you work through any difficulties. 

• Just Start Writing - Now that you’ve planned out your writing, it’s time to get typing. It’s not going to get any easier the longer you wait!  

• Record your sources - Keep full records of all your writing especially references - this will make it easier to compile for your final reference list.  

• Remember time can be a friend or an enemy. Therefore, plan and execute. 

Lucica Frunza – BSc Adult Nursing 

• Set an earlier deadline – Rather than working to your final deadline, work towards an earlier due date so that you have some leeway in case you need additional time. 

• Remind yourself of your goals – Set SMART goals for yourself and display them so you can refer to them when needed.  

• Start Early – Try and decide your topic as soon as possible. This will allow you to start researching and understanding the direction you want your dissertation to go in.  

• Seek Support – Once you begin to work on your dissertation, speak to your friends and family if you need support. This support might just be giving you time and space to concentrate on your work.  

• Ask for help – Remember that communicating your student needs is not a weakness.

• Manage your health – Give yourself time to relax and try and maintain a healthy lifestyle during the process. For me, going to the gym and walking my dog worked well.  

Veronika Barat – BA Hospitality Management  

• Make a time plan and stick to it – Creating your dissertation is a long process, therefore, chunking it into smaller pieces always helps with time management and motivation.  

• When you are doing secondary data collection, make some notes regarding the topics discussed in the journal/article – This way you know which document to get back to if you need some further information. You can save a lot of time and avoid confusion.  

• When you are doing the primary data collection, make sure to ask relevant questions and be concise – I made the mistake of asking too many questions in my survey and I ended up with too much irrelevant data.  

• Schedule meetings with your supervisor for each chapter in advance – Their insight is vital for a successful dissertation, but they cannot help you if you turn to them at the last minute (therefore it's very important to stick to the time plan). 

• If you are doing surveys/questionnaires for data collection, use LinkedIn to look for participants – If you join a group on LinkedIn, you can message its members. I was surprised how many managers responded very positively to my enquiry.  

Vanessa Falchi - LLM International Business and Commercial Law 

• Choose a topic that really interests you - Sometimes it’s not easy to find a topic to develop, because the choice is too narrow or too broad. Don’t be afraid to ask your tutor or to consult someone else to find new ideas - there’s nothing worse than being stuck researching something unappealing. 

• Make sure you have enough sources to work on – Some of the sources you find will be the starting point for your work. Make sure you give yourself plenty of time to do research as it takes time to find useful and relevant resources. 

• Plan ahead and avoid procrastination – It is normal to feel overwhelmed or stuck while writing a dissertation. Be sure to give yourself plenty of time, so if you need it, you can leave it for a while, take a break, and go back to work on it fully charged and with new ideas. Knowing that you have enough time to write helps avoid unnecessary stress.  

• Make sure you have time to review – Once the work is done, you will need to review it before submitting it. Things like typos, random mistakes out of distraction and occasional spelling errors can bring your marks down, so make sure you take time to double and triple-check it before submitting. This is particularly important for non-native speakers. Some sentences that sound good translated from our native language could not sound good to your readers. You can use tools like Grammarly or you could ask a native speaker to have a look at your work as two sets of eyes are usually better than one. 

• Do not hesitate in asking for help – Writing a dissertation is an interesting journey, but it can be challenging. If you feel stuck or simply want a piece of advice on how to optimise your work, do not hesitate in reaching out for help. UWL has plenty of resources to support you. Sometimes, even a quick chat with a more experienced student can make a huge difference.