Well, as you already knew, greetings and talking about the weather and sports might be the most popular topics among Brits when meeting each others. How about among Brunelers (my term for Brunel students) at the moment? Can you guess and do you want to make a guess? You have 5 seconds to try:
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Time’s up!!!
Well, I won’t keep you any longer for the answer, it is….
– Greetings
– Updates about ourselves: actually it would be the status of the ethics forms, research proposals and how far you’ve reached in your planned research
– Discussion on the difficulties you’ve encountered with your research/ ethics form
Well, I don’t want to generalise this for all courses, but it is true to me and would be applicable to post-grade students who belong to Humanities, Social Sciences, Business courses or any research which may involve working with people, asking people’s opinion, etc. Because it is required that you should have your ethics form approved by the Research Ethics Committee before conducting your research with people. So if you know it in advance and you have your research idea in advance, you would be an advantage to think and plan ahead… Believe me, designing the research and getting approval for your ethics form may consume more time than you’ve thought!!!! So, think about your research idea when you still have time because time is not on your side. My time here in Brunel just flies…
In other terms, dissertation can be an interesting experience as well beacause it is time when you go out in search of the answers for the questions/problems you’re interested to find out. So you do have choices to approach and begin your dissertation….
For me, I am not lucky with my topic. I have the idea, but it has been so difficult to get the permission of one organisation to do research, if you don’t volunteer or worked for them before. You may think of different strategies to approach them and reflect this in your methodology. However, this is only the case when you are successful in getting their permission. Or else, in my situation, I have to change the method to recruit participants for my study and change my research questions accordingly. Yet, still waiting for the Committe’s feedback….
I hope I don’t scare and make you feel stressed about the dissertation. Actually, it should be right if you’re stressed during your dissertation period because it is your “child” after all and you’ll have to invest your time and efforts for it. It should reflect what you’ve learned and gained during your time here and most important it would make you proud of yourself when you add the 2 letters (MA) after your name. Even if you’ve tried , failed, even changed the topic like me, you would then realise how much you could learn from it…
attkliveandenjoyyourlife 