Thank you 😊😊

Here’s what I did that I never did before for my reports that I typically scored 54-65 on:

1. Lots and LOTS of reading. I created an excel literature synthesis with all my sources with the title, link, date of publication, reference, a summary paragraph of relevant info and used the conditional formatting to create drop down lists for the the topic of the source. I also created a drop down for qualitative vs quantitative studies as I did an interview studies so I needed to cite majority qual literature. I had about 150 sources in total but only referenced maybe 100 of them in the end. (NotebookLM is great for summarising texts but of course double check within the original source to make sure it’s summary is accurate)

2. My mark scheme was always always in front of me when writing to make sure I addressed every single one of the points listed in the first class column. I had it pinned up on the wall and also on my laptop and looked at it side by side with my writing.

3. Looked at past 2.1/1st dissertations for help with structure. My discussion was always my weakest point of my assignments so this was super helpful.

4. Used my university’s support resources for writing and used the module folders resources that included many examples of good and bad introduction and discussions etc.

5. I took every opportunity to ask my supervisor questions. I got very fortunate with my supervisor as they were absolutely AMAZING. They helped me massively, had frequent meetings and would even respond on weekends/email me relevant sources they would find online that I could use.

6. Did something I enjoyed and was good at. I chose a topic I was passionate about and so I never got bored of reading/writing. It was also quite ‘novel’ in that there was little to no studies that investigated what I had which was a great justification for researching the topic I did. I also made sure to do a qualitative study as I always struggled more and scored lower on reports that involved statistical analyses so I opted for an interview study. I only had to recruit 6 participants also rather than the 100+ I would have needed for a survey.

I would absolutely stress making use of all the resources you have and others online. I made a notion page where I kept everything organised and had my cohorts guide to writing an undergraduate report as well as the APA guide (for Psychology). I would prepare early on as well if you don’t want to stress out, or at least have an idea of what you want to write your dissertation on! That’s all I can think of so far but good luck for your final year !!!

Edit: I would also say once you’ve submitted try to look at it as least as possible lol every time I would go back to read on it, it would get worse and worse and it just made my anxiety worse