Dissertation? Completed without a hitch! (I wish)

Well I have finially finished my dissertation only 9/10 months after I first began it and let me tell you, it has not been an easy ride. It has been a roller coaster, first with the ethics, then with the collection of data and finally with actually completing the report.

I remember in my first year thinking " I really don't thik I will ever be able to complete a dissertation." Right from day dot, my dissertation worried me, as I knew it would be a massive task, and now one I ever really believed would be possible from me.

I wanted to do something that would interest me, so that I would be interested enough to do the reading that needed to be completed in order to get it done. Yet even though it interested me massivly, I did not really find it all that interesting when it came to the amount of work that needed to go into it. I thought it would be a lot of work, but this much work? Nope I had no idea!

I have spent months trying to get it sorted, lets start with the ethics form. Which for me was pretty simple, as it was a qaulitative study, the ethics didn't seem as difficult as it was for those doing a quantitative one. I got that sorted once I put my mind to it, then came time to collect the participants! I thought this would be relitively easy, being as I only needed 6! I felt pretty lucky compared to those doing quantitative, who needed sometimes up to 100 participants.

However, collecting my participants turned out to be harder than I first thought it would be. As not many people were too thrilled with the idea of doing a half hour intereview plus, surprisingly, many people did not meet the criteria for my study, which was a shame. I interviewed my first participant back in November 2011, when I realised my questions did not gain enough information from people. So to be honest I started to panic a little, as I thought I had to resubmit my ethics and then wait for that to be approved. This was luckily not the case!

I had to rethink my questions though, as the first set of questions only gained ten minutes worth of answers and I knew this was not long enough. I needed between 20-30 minutes worth. So I went back to the drawing board and thought about what exactly it was, I was trying to find out. So I looked again at some of the misconcetions surrounding self-harm and developed more questions based on this. Now though, there was a problem, we had hit Christmas holidays. Everyone will have gone home, so I had to wait until after Christmas to be able to continue the intrviews. My project schedual at this point had gone out of the window!

I spent Christmas working on my other essays, as I thought I needed to pay some attention to those, if I want a good grade, my project was not the only thing I had going on! My second interview wasn't until february but this one gave me 22 minutes. This ade me so happy. So I continued to intrview people and I interviewed a further 7 partciants, yet three of the participants had to be excluded from the data set, as they were only 10-15 minutes long. I knew this time it was not the questions though, as I had enough from other people.

However, this did mean I only had 5 interviews that were useable all in all. So I went and spoke to my tutor, to see whether I still needed to interview more, as we were gettng close to the deadline for the draft to be in. She said as long as I felt I had enough data to work with, it should be okay. So that was a relief I must admit. Now we come to the hard bit-working with the data.

The reason I chose a qualitative study over a quantitative one, is because I hate numbers! Seriously despise them! So to me doing a qualitative study seemed to be the lesser of two evils. You see with quantitative, you have to use SPSS and all sorts, and the thought of that made me want to cry! I had only ever done one qualitative though, and I didn't do overly great on it. Yet I knew where it was I had gone wrong and decided that I would prefer that, over the other.

To start with, with the data, I had to transcribe it, talk about mind numbing boredem when doing that. Just listen, pause and type. Each one took me at least 4 hours to complete. Meaing I had spent twenty hours with my data, before I even began to analyse it, and that is not ncluding all the time I spent trying to get people to take part, things going wrong when people agreed and actually carrying out th interviews. By this oint, I had already had enough of my project, I hated it and didn't think it was any good. So I was definitely lot looking forward to my write up.

he analysing I thought would be pretty simple, choose some extracts, and write about them, sounds simple enough, right? Wrong! First you have to read the transcripts about 4-5 times just to make sure you know your data, before you start deciding what can be used and what needs to be left out. So then you need to look at what is happening in the data, what looks good, what looks like it is similar or contrasting to what other participants have said. Once you have done that, it is time to start deciding which extracts can be used within your study and why they can be used.

I had so had enough of the things my participants had said at this point (Sorry to any of you reading this, it was not what you said, just the amount if time I had spent reading it! lol) as i knew the interviews inside out, but this did not seem to make the process any easier, I still had to sit for hours deciding what can be used and what needs to be left out. So then I started to put all the things that were similar and contrasting together, to see what those sub-themes could be named and how these fit together as main themes. I hadn't even started talking about what the participants had said yet, and naming the sub-themes was much more difficult than I thought it would be, as I just kept thinking of the questions I had asked. So in the end my friend took a look for me and helped me come up with more sufficiant names. Then I had to group these together into main theme. That bit was pretty simple to be honest, so didn't stress me out too much!

The time it took however, to write up what they had said, felt like an eternity. I think all in all, that part took me well over a week, with a little panic inbetween, where I believed I had lost over 1,000 words that I had typed up the night before, but my friends boyfriend helped me sort that one! (Where would I be now without these people? lol).

Whilst doing all of these other things I had been reading up about self harm and taking down notes about what would be good in my study. I had also started writing up the introduction, but it was most definitely in its early stages, didn't even have sub-headings at first! So once I had finished the analysis, I had to get down to it with the rest of the write up, which felt like it took forever too. I remember when we first started our projects, they said "8,000, sounds like a lot of words but trust me, you will want more". I could not imagine wanting more than 8,000 words, that is of course until I was writing it up, but the time I got to the discussion, I only had about 300 words left to spare!! I hadn't even done an abstract either. Now I really wanted to cry, I did what I could though and got 200 words over the word count, which obviously was too much! We're allowed only under 1% over otherwise we drop a grade point. My discussion also looked pretty crap at this point, as I only had two studies in it and not a whole lot else!

Then my tutor told me to change my results section, so that it didn't have so much in it and it was easier to follow. To be honest, this annoyed the hell out of me. I LOVED my results section and felt it was the best part of the study, so I spent two days throwing a tiny little trantrum to myself, where I told myself I was not going to change the results section as it did not need changing! Then I realised I am an adult and therefore have to act like one, even if I do want to act like a little child! So I set about changing my results and aking words out of it. I thought this would take a lot longer than it did however, as it only took around 3 hours to complete it! it also gave me an extra 800 words to work with, so I got back to work on my discussion!

Now the hard thing about my study was, it had never really been done before. There is very little data out there on public stigma towards people who self harm. So I was a little stressed trying to get things to relate to my study, but knew if I worded it right, I would manage it. I did at this point however, wish I had done a different study that I may be able to find more research on, but then I don't think it would be as interesting. Well to others the one I have done now, may not be interesting, but I found it to be lol. Wat I had to do is somehow relate the findings of studies of A & E staff to that of mine. Which was hard as they're not really the same thing, but it still seemed to mash together somehow!!

So finally I was well on y way, the worst thing was the niggly parts that had to be changed. Such as changing the words self harm to self-harm and then changing Self-harm to self-harm. This seems pretty easy but when you have used a word over 300 times, it gets tedious to go through and continually change every single one of them.

And then came the day to get it printed and binded. Now the printing side of it sounds pretty simple right? Again wrong! I printed out three copies, which lets just say cost quite a bit. Only as they were printing I realised some pages were a yellow colour and some pages were crisp white. This is not something I could have. If it were just an essay, I would have accepted it, but NOT on my dissertation! Not a chance! I seriously felt like crying at this point, as I just could not handle how crappy it woud look. So my friend, Lucy told me to go and tell the library staff, who kindly refuded my money and ensured the next printer I went on, had all white paper.

Then to print the pages that needed to be in colour. This is another thing I thought would be simple, expensive but simple. I was again wrong. The first lot printed out double sided. So I had to print them again!! This time I made sure they were one sided. Then headed over to start binding them. I honestly just wanted to cry at this point, nothing felt like it was going right.

The binding I knew wouldn't be simple but with two of us, it made it a little easier, probably halved the time it took me to do it!  Only one small snag, the second document I started to do, I then realised I had been putting them on the binder backwards, so the whole project was mixed up, I was right at the end of that one when I realised, so had to take it all off!! Then I started to do it again, when we realised I had punched the holes in two of the pages on the wrong side, so I sent Lucy off to re-print them. while i nicked those two pages from the third one that needed binding. Finally, after about two hours spent in the library I had all three printed and bound, so off we went to hand our projects in! I must admit, although it is a relief that it is handed in, I still feel a little sick about it, as I cannot change anything on it and now keep noticing small little things that are wrong with it. I need to stop looking at it!

All in all, this project has been the hardest piece of work I have ever had to do! However I showed myself I could do it and feel like I have achieved a hell of a lot a long the way! So YAY me!! lol

On the right is mine, on the left is Lucy's

Going to be away

Hi anyone that reads :P

Due to it being my third year and me having a mountain of work to do, I have decided to ignore my blog for a while. I want to just get through this next 5 weeks and then I shall be back at it.

Wish me luck for getting my work done :D

What's the point in a student rep?

What's the point in a student rep?

So this year I was appointed student rep a while a go, I thought this would be a good thing, something good to put on my CV while at the same time giving a voice to the students. Sounds great, right? Wrong!!

Firstly there is no point in student reps, when they're not really listened to in the first place. I bought up a good few issues at the meeting, that the notes reflected nothing but dismissal, even if the tutors did try and deny it, this is still what came across in the notes. Not just to me either. One other student actually said "the notes basically say, here are the issues and here is why you are wrong".

I feel as a student rep I should bring this to light, as I am here to represent the students. Yet it feels to me as though I am being made out to be doing this, purely to cause trouble. Yet I have been in so many situations where teachers have hated me, I know what hell it makes my life and I wouldn't want to do something that I know will get tutors to hate me if I didn't feel it necessary.

So I emailed my points across to said tutor and again was met with a list of reasons I was wrong. I then arranged an appointment to see the subject feild leader and the tutor that attended the meeting. I felt that this is something that couldn't be dropped as it seemed to have a negative impact on students who are currently studying, which I thought was unfair.

I got a letter from one of the students who felt that one point was unfair-this was about dyslexia and still having comments on your work about written expression, spelling and grammar, even though these should not be taken into account, basically this student was unhappy as it is frustrating to keep getting told your sentence structure isn't great, your spelling is poor, your grammar needs work blah blah blah, as no matter how much they try, they produce the same results. The fact is, you then start to try and change it, which is even more frustrating as you are then trying to do a lot more than you are capable of. Which can then hinder your work. It is not like students with dyslexia don't know that their work is not to the same standard as everyone else, yet having it pointed out very time you hand in work is like poking someone in on crutches and saying "you can't walk the same as everyone else" it is pointing out the obvious and totally pointless. I can really relate to this, as I have dyslexia and I know myself it is frustrating, however I also knew I couldn't bring it about as my issue, mainly because it was not my issue, it was bought up by someone else, I could just understand the viewpoint-so the letter basically said there was no point in leaving comments about grammar and the fact that comments were there, concerns her. This was discussed at length and at least an email was sent out to explain students with the yellow sticker were not being marked down for these things. Which clearly is not really resolving the problem as students with dyslexia are still having useless comments on their work that do them no good at all.

then we got onto another issue about a member of staff, and I was basically told I was lying about it. Why the hell I would lie about something like that I have no idea, especially as it wasn't an issue that was bought to me. This was an issue bought to another student rep, yet when I was talking about it with this student rep, someone else asked me if I was talking about this member of staff as relayed to me how they felt about it. So I then triple checked the facts with her, so I knew I was going in with the correct facts. Yet I got told "that seems very unusual as that is not the story I get, but I will email (member of staff).

I was also informed that if people have specific problems with the notes, they should go to the tutors and not come through me, as then they are getting things third hand. Well correct me if I am wrong, but surely a student rep is there, for the students to discuss issues with and then have that relayed to tutors. I do not understand what I am missing here. I tried to explain that some students do not feel confident enough to do so, so would rather go through me. However it honestly felt like I was being made out to be a liar and anyone that knows me, knows how much I hate liars. Why would anyone put themselves in a position of arguing with tutors purely for the fun of it? I mean this is going to have a knock on affect for me, as it will no doubt be relayed to other tutors that I tried to cause trouble, when in reality I did exactly what I was appointed to do, I gave a voice to the students!

Missing Spain

A lot of the time, people will hear me say "I hated Spain", "I would never live there again" ect. Yet recently I have begun to miss the life I had there. Yes this is the place where my world crumbled around me and I crumbled a long with it. However, it is also the place, that I began to become independent. The place where I met people (only some) that cared about me, just because I was me. A Place I learnt that I was also important.

Moving there, was most definitely the best thing I could ever have done for myself. I often talk about the negatives of my anxiety, yet there was one huge advantage to the fact that I developed anxiety. Without it, I would never have moved to Spain. Meaning I wouldn't be in university now.

There was so much good that came from Spain, that at times I realise I am truly lucky to have ever been there. Take my Friend Kel. Now, I would have no idea what to do without her. She is one of the greatest friends I have ever had. Her family became like my family. I'd never really experienced that in my life. Sure before I moved to Spain I had people that I considered family, but that soon went away, once I moved to Spain and these people realised I could no longer do anything for them. I was suddenly worth nothing to them, they didn't really have a desire to keep in touch-well at least that it how it felt. Yet this time round, it as different.

I was in such a bad place, I couldn't really do anything, to help anyone else. I was a mess and needed people to be there for me. I never thought I'd get that though. I never thought I was important enough to get that. Yet Kelly's family gave me that. They gave me somewhere, where I could feel safe. I can never ever repay them for everything they did. My life is so different now, as a result of how they gave me a sense of self worth.

However now I feel that sense diminishing, fast! I am again feeling that I can't be cared about, unless I can do for others. This is no ones fault. There is no one to blame. There is no one, that I help, that has made me feel this way. It is just the way I have become and it is the way I feel my self worth is dependant purely on those that I can help. I know this is something I need to deal with and I will. I am just unsure of how.

This is why I think I am missing Spain. I miss the person I was then. I miss the safety I felt. I miss the life I had. Which to me is the most shocking thing, I have said in years!

maybe, just maybe

So I may finally be getting somewhere. After 7 years of fighting with doctors and arguing that CBT does not work for me, I think I am finally being taken seriously! I received a call at 9:06 this morning. I 'd had 0 hours sleep all night so weren't really in the mood for a phone call, but I didn't recognise the number, so it had me a little intrigued. So I answered.

It was the people from the healthy minds network. I know that their first port of call is CBT, so I weren't holding out much hope for anything further than that and I knew full well if that was what they offered me I was going to decline and try once more t go back to the doctors. Yet this time, she said "I see you have had four lots of CBT, did you find that in any way helpful". Of course I answered no, as it just isn't helpful t me. I explained that my last therapist actually said to me, that I was doing all that was required, but it just isn't working for me. This is the point where I expected her to say "well sorry, there is not really much we can do for you the" and I'd be back at square one, as always. Only she didn't.

She informed me that I could go for an assessment and then be referred on to either the psychology or psychiatry department. She said there are four levels. The first is self help, then medication then CBT and then what they are now referring me to. She explained because this has been a long standing problem, and that very little seems to have helped, she does not see a problem with being referred on for the fourth level.

Apparently, if CBT doesn't work, places like this should refer on to the fourth level, especially if it is a long standing problem. I do not really understand why I have been discharged from CBT four times, without any recommendation for further treatment. I mean surely after the fourth time, it was pretty obvious that this just is not going to work for me.

Anyhow, I have my appointment for assessment, on whether I am in need of longer term treatment, in three weeks time. I am kind of glad I hadn't slept all night, otherwise, I doubt I would have been so open on the phone. I am just hoping that this is it. This is the time, when someone listen to me and takes my issues seriously. I really and truly hope, that for once, I will feel like I am being taken seriously and not just being palmed off and told that CBT is the only way. As if this time I get nowhere, I am not sure I have enough fight in me to once again, fight for the treatment I believe I deserve.

Feeling the pressure

So being in my third year is tough. I always knew it was going to be tough but right now, I'm not even sure I can do it. I'm stressed by the amount of work I have on, and yet I seem to lose a lot of my motivation, I suppose because I am terrified that if I put everything I have into this and don't get a good mark, or even worse, fail, I will not believe I am able to do anything.

I honestly think it was a mistake going to university while I still have axiety and depression as that takes up so much of my time. Like yesterday for instance, I was sitting transcribing-and getting quite far may I add-when all of a suddon this massive wave of anxiety hit me. I wanted to carry on, I needed to carry on. I really do not have the time to be taking breaks due to anxiety, however I could not carry on. I had to stop because this anxiety was not going away. I tried to fight it, I tried to be strong, but the anxiety won out, yet again.

I strongly believe I would be doing much better right now, if it were not for the anxiety and depression. I would go to the library regularly, I would sit and study without suddenly being over come by fear. All these things would improve my grades massively. Yet I also know that there are plenty of people out there that don't even believe that I have anxiety in the firt place. I mean people often do not believe what they cannot see.

This is something I fnd I also struggle with. I have had anxiety for at least 8 years now, it comes to a point where you learn to only panic on the inside, and therefore it looks, much of the time, like I am simply making excuses. I wish I were. If I were making excuses, at least I'd be able to give myself a kick up the butt and get going again. Yet for me it is not as simple as that. When I kick myself up the butt, and force myself to do the things that scare me, I then find it makes things all the worse, I begin to crack under the pressure and begin to spirel back into an even worse state.

I was hoping, that while at uni, I would work on getting myself better. I would be able to come out of it, well and able to work a full time job. I am ashamed to say, this has not happened. There is no way when I finish I will be able to work. Even if I pass, I will still manage to feel like a failiur. I mean who goes to uni for three years and then comes out of it and goes on unemployment benefits? I know-or rather I believe-I have a good reason. Yet I still feel many people judging me as a result.

I do plan on somehow having a gradual reintroduction to work, as I believe that is the only way I will ever really be able to do it. Yet I fear this will not be good enough for many. I fear that many will still judge and believe me to be lazy. Sometimes I wish I could show outward signs of my anxiety, I wish people could see what it does. Yet that will never happen because I have become so cotrolled in it, that most of the time, when I am feeling extreme anxiety I appear to be completely normal.

Ever wonder about some people?

I have plenty of people in my life that are not exactly what I was call friends, or even acquaintances, in fact some of them really hate me, and that is fine, we don't all get on in this life and I am okay with that.

However, when someone decides they absolutely despise you and just cannot get over what a terrible person they think you are, to the point of them thinking you are nearly evil personified, why would that person then be so interested in keeping up to date with what is going on in your life?

I mean don;t get me wrong, ever now and again I have a sneak peak at people's blogs that I fell out with ages ago, however, I do not view it every time they make a post. What is the point in that? Seriously, I don't get it. We all like to have a nosey, but surely this is bordering on obsession? I don't think there is a single person that I dislike so much, that I need to read their blog every time they post, just to see if my predictions about that person were right. It seems like a very odd thing to me. Is it just me, or is this something that is odd, would you views someone's blog, that you hated, every day?