Assalamualaikum,
So… Second semester of graduate school is done and dusted, Alhamdulillah. I have no clue as how my assignments went, I guess we’ll find that out in a couple of weeks’ time. Hopefully all goes well, *fingers crossed*
Anyhow. Apologies (again) for not updating this blog of mine. No excuses – just been swamped with assignments and didn’t feel like writing much.
I’m into my final leg of my journey as a Master’s student – working on my dissertation. I put a challenge for myself, to finish my dissertation within 100 days. This started on the first day of our dissertation module (last Thursday), and the 100th day will be on 16th August (a week before my birthday).
100 days of prepping, drafting, and writing the dissertation.
Okay, so obviously I’m not going to spend the whole 100 days writing the dissertation. I mean, it’s a 12,500-15,000 words dissertation. The writing up part is probably not going to take that long if I know what I’m writing about.
This #100DaysofDissertation challenge is just for me to ensure that I do something related to my dissertation every day. Be it something small like reading a journal article or a book chapter, drafting out proposal and survey questions, collecting and analyzing data, or the actual writing up of my dissertation.
After all, sedikit-sedikit, lama-lama jadi bukit, no?
It’s going to be a loooooooong summer.
But, that’s alright, I guess. I am kind of looking forward for the whole process, because I think I am pretty invested in my topic (will write more about it once my dissertation is over, I don’t want to jinx it). Right now I’m working on finalizing my proposal to be submitted on Thursday. Also starting to draft emails and survey questions to be sent out in the next few weeks, pending my ethics approval from the school.
Fingers crossed, hopefully everything will go well this whole summer. I’m quite excited because I didn’t do a dissertation / final year project for my undergraduate, so this is my first ever long piece of academic work. Wish me luck!
Getting support from the community
To be honest, I got into the whole #100DaysofDissertation thanks to an Instagram account that I stumbled upon a few weeks ago – Academeology. Technically a lot of the people following the account are PhD candidates and all. But it’s just been an inspiration reading and following all their work, and then I realized something. Why don’t I join in? It’d be a fun challenge to do, and I can turn on them for support.
After all, isn’t that what academia supposed to be like? 🙂
I’d probably document more of my #100DaysofDissertation on my Instagram stories, and through my bi-weekly newsletter, so follow / subscribe if you haven’t already! [p/s – if you want to subscribe, you can leave your email address below!]
Alright then, that should be it for now. Until next time, stay awesome and take care!