Diss is done!
Today, I defended my dissertation which is the culmination of the year long dissertation project. It’s a big relief, and something I am definitely proud of. Back in third year, I didn’t have much idea what I would end up investigating for my dissertation project, but the way things panned out was perfect timing: the UK went into a second nationwide lockdown, reducing physical activity and negatively affecting mental health, and lifestyle behaviours. After reading some papers, particularly Ammar and colleagues from 2020, I was inspired to add to the extant literature with my own project.
That initial inspiration feels like years ago, but was only back in February 2021. While I had the idea in the back of my mind, I parked it as I still had third year coursework to complete. It wasn’t until September 2021 that the idea really came to fruition, with the university ethics committee finally giving me the go-ahead in November 2021. Since then, academic life has been filled with Qualtrics, SPSS, Excel, and Word documents, along with literally hundreds of papers being referenced throughout. The written part of the project was submitted at the start of this month, but the process wasn’t fully over until today.
The presentation element of the project is worth 20% of the module grade. With it being a double-weighted module, it counts for even more when it comes to overall degree classification. The presentation is similar to a PhD defence viva voce, with the background of the study, it’s aim and hypotheses, findings, and discussion all included. Lecturers, examiners, and peers are then welcome to ask questions to probe discussion further. It was the questions and discussion that I was most nervous about, but sitting there on Microsoft Teams in my spare bedroom, it actually came quite naturally. I perhaps presented the main slide deck slightly fast, but I came away from the defence presentation feeling surprisingly calm. It’s certainly a huge weight off my shoulders!
Now onto another presentation tomorrow and an exam next week, before the undergraduate journey is over!
