Week of 24th March - Easter holidays should really be for holiday time!

Still struggling with being at home and trying to get work done at the same time! I am ahead of myself though really, I don't think I need to have my essays finished by the time I go back, it would just be helpful!
I have gone back to working on my first essay, the crime control one, and hoping to finish that today, nearly there!!
The key I have found is to start work early in the day and then once I have actually started working, it's easy to carry on.
Also making time for breaks has helped, working for an hour and a half and then having a 20 minute break seems to work well.
I think I have accepted that I can have more of a holiday now if I want, but will have to make up for it by getting down to some serious work when I get back, especially with seminars still to prepare for...
Only 6 weeks left now until we start our exams, not sure if that's good or bad!
I have been working on a key reading for the crime control exam aswell this week; by reading all of those (shared amongst ourselves) during the term, we will literally just have to read over the notes for the exam as we will already know it, just incase we don't have much time between exams! Exam dates come out in 3 weeks time aswell, which will be a great help with revision planning, shame they couldn't be published sooner though.

Dissertation work!!

Hi! I just wanted to talk a little bit about what i have been doing over the past week- i was meant to have uploaded this blog before the first one but my internet at home (in Devon- enough said) wasnt working!! After suddenly having a massive panic over my dissertation, i decided it was time to knuckle down and begin writing it- more difficult than you would think!! I decided to set aside a few weeks to begin writing it all up, as i had already gathered my data and all the relevent literature needed. Although it has/is difficult, i have found it useful setting deadlines for myself- especially if your dissertation supervisor is too relaxed!! I wanted to set myslef achievable targets so i decided i should write about 1000 words a day, so far it is working well. My draft deadline is the first week in April, leaving me enough time to write my other two essays once i have written the dissertation. I would therefore suggest the key to success and not being stressed is to plan early and to be prepared- dont leave everything to the last minute. I also find making notes in advance helps because then all is needed is it to be written up.

Working (slowly!) on 2nd essay

Hi! It's my turn to write on the blog so here it is...

I have three essays and a seen exam planned to do before we start back at lectures (I'm not doing a dissertation) so am working on one of my essays today which is for metropolis. I have half written my crime control essay aswell when I was feeling motivated a while ago so still have that to finish off aswell. It's been quite hard getting down to some work recently as I have been at home, but I know it's going to make my life so much easier if I get all this done in time!

Today I have done about 2 hours of reading and 2 hours of typing up - I meant to do alot more than this (was planning on having a rough draft done by the end of today but still have 2000 words to go!!) but found other important!) things to do!

Will have to make an effort tomorrow as I won't be doing any wed or thurs as I have plans!

If anyone has any tips on how to get motivated they'd be most welcome ;-)

Welcome to our study blog!

We have written a diary style entry for each day to show what we have been doing acadmically. Hopefully this will either reassure you that you are on track, encourage you get your head down a bit more, or just give you ideas about how to tackle dissertations, revision etc.