What I've been up to...

 I feel as if I haven't blogged in a while and I was unsure what to actually blog about. Instead I thought I'd briefly summarise what I've been doing and my findings.

Draft Essay 

Having handed in my draft essay I was very pleased to get some helpful feedback from Sam. He had given me pointers on each section of my essay which helped me see what steps I needed to take in order to improve the content. Whilst writing the draft I found it difficult to create a balance between reflective writing, personal anecdotes, reflection on ethics and academic references/theories. With what feels like a small word count I felt it impossible to equally include all of these things, however after re reading and re working through my essay slowly I'm finally managing to find some balance. I struggle when it comes to time management in the sense that I'll let something take over my whole day and keep working and working without getting anywhere helpful. I'll then be bored and exhausted and not able to produce work to a good standard because I never give myself a break. What I've come to realise, especially during this course is that it is much more beneficial to work through things slowly and focus on one thing at a time. This way each day I feel refreshed and ready with new ideas instead of dreading opening my laptop.

Something that I was also struggling with was getting good quality references and theories to back up my points. In many instances I didn't find google scholar helpful at all but I'm getting used to looking for reliable sources and with the help of citethemright I feel as if I can confidently reference sources now.

Plan of action

Over the next few weeks I aim to keep working through my essay. Once I've corrected each paragraph I know I'll be very much over the word count and will have to focus on cutting out sections that aren't as important or seeing if I can re phrase any sentences in order to make them more concise. I then aim to keep going through it but giving myself a day or so in between re reads so my brain is clear as after having a break from going over my draft essay and going back to it after having it back, I realised how unnecessary some sentences were or how I failed to explain and relate certain theories or theorists back to my AOL (I did this an awful lot actually). Hopefully I can get someone to check my grammar as that is certainly not a strong point of mine. Then hand in day will creep up on us before we know it and I really hope that by that point I feel fully prepared and happy with my work.

I've made a start on my diagram and hope to improve and add to it over the coming weeks. One thing I've realised is how much of a pain trying to reference a google image is! As I'm still unsure of what is exactly acceptable for the diagram I hope to get a draft in before the hand in date just to see if I'm heading in the right direction. 

What we need to keep in mind

- It is ok to have breaks and days off - This is a part time course and usually we may be in full time work whilst trying to complete this 

-Everyone goes at their own pace - I often get stressed when I find out what other people are doing as I start to doubt and question where I'm at but I think we all need to keep in mind that we all lead very different lives and work in very different ways. Some people prefer to dedicate specific days to Uni work, some people have very busy working lives with other jobs and some people prefer to get it all done and then have a break. Every single scenario is ok and depends on the individual. 

-Don't put so much pressure on yourself - You have time and you have plenty of help from the BA PP community 

-Everyone will approach the essay and diagram differently - As we have a lot of freedom I think it is hard not to get anxious about our work as all of us seem to have slightly different approaches to our work but that is due to the nature of the course. We are all correct but our approaches will vary depending on our AOL's and what we would like to create for the diagram section