For this term’s constellation, the task was to start prepping and preparing for next year’s dissertation essay. We had to fill in a form stating the different topics we wanted to base our topics on for the dissertation and explain why and from this we were assigned to a tutor who best fit and also help with the specific topic we want to discuss further.
I wanted to base my dissertation on branding but more specifically discussing about creating and setting up my own clothing business next year or in the next couple years coming. Branding relates to my subject area I am studying, which is Graphic Communication, this has given me an insight of communicating through various visual languages techniques communicating the message we want to communicate to the target audience.
One of the first tasks I had to do was to investigate academic sources relating to branding, small business, creating a brand etc that I can use to support my discussion. I had to use MetSearch to find these sources, and I have only used this search a few times and I found it quite difficult to get the hang of it but when I had a workshop explaining how to use MetSearch effectively and correctly and this was very useful to have in place as it made the whole process a lot easier and simpler to do. I found various articles, book chapters etc. Also had to use Harvard referencing to correctly references these sources correctly.
I had to state throughout the essay what I would be discussing in the dissertation, going through different sections, creating an overview, dissertation plan etc, this was quite difficult to do at first but Sarah gave us examples of how we could lay out each section which looking back was very helpful and useful to create a cohesive and easy to understand how I will base my essay upon and creating a consistent plan to follow to ensure structure. This will help my essay have structure and also give myself a guide on what to write in each section.
Another thing I found difficult through out this whole process was trying to write academically as I have always struggled to do so suggested by Sarah they were some resources on Moodle that will help wit this and I found using these resources have helped me considerably whilst writing this out as I was able to plan out the structure of the essay into different sections dictating the subject topic of each section.
Doing this dissertation prep essay is good practice for the final Dissertation based on creating my own business. Writing and discussing such a large amount in an essay form is something I haven’t really done much of, this is the most I have written and it was really difficult at first as it was such a large amount of words to reach but looking back, one thing that helped me reach the word count was to create a plan of what I wanted to discuss and write about, writing out themes and discussing them further, breaking down sub topics and so on.
With the pandemic that is currently going in the world with the Corona virus, the way the teaching dynamic has been has now changed considerably, all the work, one to ones, tutorials etc have been transferred to online teaching and this has made this whole process a lot more difficult as I am not able to use and take advantage of certain aspects such as the library even though there is an online service, I was not able to find certain sources as the library only had a hard copy of it so this meant I couldn’t take the book out so I had to find alternative means of finding these sources which made it considerably difficult to come across these sources, so I had to use Google to find the book ‘Thinking Through Fashion’ which I found but I was only able to read a few chapter before having to pay which was not useful at all. Not being able to go into University it has made it difficult to focus and keep to a routine but remembering what Sarah said about having a schedule to make sure I keep to a routine and checking off weekly targets to ensure certain tasks are completed by designated dates but even doing this wasn’t easy as motivation was lacking but I was able to push through and complete the tasks that were given to me.
I think all and all, I have created an essay stating what my dissertation is going to be about and what will be discussed, the type of dissertation I chose, using academic sources to help answer the questions I have also t help enable me to start creating a plan and following steps to ensure creating a business that will be successful. I have stated everything clearly as a whole of what I am intending to do and following thus will help me complete this in my final year of university. But this was not an easy process to do because of the pandemic that is going on currently in the UK just made everything a lot more difficult not just for myself but also for other students but I was happy I was able to complete the task given to me to the best of my ability making sure I completed every task that was given, following the guide given to me by Sarah which helped a lot when sticking to a structured template throughout.
my learning journal 