Arghh Feat. A nice reflection

 With the final deadline looming over me, I have spent my time gathering last minute material that I need, and printing out extra bits and pieces. I have finally printed my essay as I now feel confident it has reached a good standard that I am really proud of. This is probably going to be my last diary reflection as I will be solely concentrating on making sure I have not missed anything. I am going to take the time tonight to make a checklist of everything I need and go through what I have, and then sort out the appendices in my folder which contains anything relevant to my project. I am also going to look through my log book to ensure that I have documented everything to an adequate degree, and, if not, I can add in extra detail so it is as reflective and detailed as possible. I can use my diary reflections to assist me in doing this.

All in all, I have learnt a lot from this experience, including personal lessons, and more practical lessons like the different skills attached to the project. I definitely do not reject choosing to do this project, although it was incredibly overwhelming and frustrating at times, but now I have my final product to look back on and say that the rollercoaster process was worth it. I have also learnt so much about my favourite novel, Pride and Prejudice, although I will not be able to read it in the same way ever again considering what I have found out about the author and the novel. However, I would advise anyone to take this project under their wing!

How my presentation went

Yesterday, my college held a Gala evening where myself, along with many other students, presented our presentations on our projects to audience members. The evening itself was very relaxed calm, yet formal, and I very much enjoyed watching my peers talk about their project as I remained in the dark about what some of them were doing. As for my presentation, I feel as though it went really well. I had planned what I was going to say ahead of time so I felt confident with what I was talking about, but there were still some nerves about actually getting up in front of people and talking for a solid period of time. Nevertheless, I remained calm and actually enjoyed informing people about my study and what I had found out, as well as how I arrived at the point I am at now. Although it went well, I did talk for longer than I had expected, so if I were to present again, I would have condensed my information into even smaller amounts and stick to the major points and give an overview of these instead of going into depth, as this is what my essay is for. Even so, I managed to successfully inform my audience about my EPQ journey and I received appraisal from the audience, as well as my supervisor.

At the end of the presentation, I asked if anyone had any questions, and I received questions from two people.

1) Did you look more into the feminist side of the novel? If so, what did you find out?

For this question, I talked about Elizabeth in particular and how she contrasted with her female foils in the novel, such as Caroline, Jane, and Charlotte. I said that Elizabeth demonstrates this feminist ability to subvert the male-dominated society as when she first meets Darcy, he finds her inferior to him due to the fact she is a woman of lower status. However, by the end of the novel, he has come to realise that she has developed a more intrinsic kind of intelligence that differs from his previous conventional view that women should be 'accomplished', showcasing this ability and perhaps, with this, Austen was calling out for a bigger feminist movement by illustrating its potential.

2) I know you lost confidence in your own ability a few time during this project. Has your confidence improved in any way now you've come to the end? And would you feel more confident doing this again if given the chance?

I answered that I feel as though the majority of my setbacks revolved around losing confidence in myself, which resulted in losing enthusiasm and motivation. However, now that I'm nearly at the end of the project and I've seen what I am capable of, I would be able to approach the project again with a more confident and positive attitude.

As of now, I am finishing editing minor details in my essay, as well as printing out last minute material, and I also need to sort out my appendices.

More presentation prep and thinking about the deadline

With the deadline drawing close, I am now spending some time getting everything together so I don't have to do it last minute. I spent today going through my presentation, rehearsing it and making notes, therefore I know what I am going to say and any extra information I want to add in that is not in my PowerPoint. I also completed the first part of the presentation section of my Log Book. Yesterday, during an EPQ session, my supervisor read through a draft of my essay and he gave me some improvements revolving around my conclusion, saying that it needs to be more about answering my question rather than a wrap up of everything I've said in my essay. I will focus on improving my conclusion tomorrow and then ask him to read through it again to check if it succeeds in answering my question. After my presentation, it will be a case of making sure I have everything I need together.

Presentation completion

I have now completed my Powerpoint with enough time left to go through it and adjust anything, as well as rehearse it to make sure I say everything I need to say within the time frame.
I have made sure I have included important things such as...

• My thought process
• My initial ideas
• Planning
• Primary and secondary research
• The content of my essay
• Reflection (what went well, what didn't go well)
• What I would do differently 
• The skills I've learnt 

I now need to complete the presentation section in my Log Book.

Writing an abstract

Today I have decided to concentrate on writing the abstract of my project. I decided to leave this until I have written the majority of my essay as I was not sure of the direction my project would end in, but as I now have a clear view of where my project is going in terms of the conclusion I would end up with, I think it is now the right time. I have looked at other examples of abstracts as I wasn't too sure on what an abstract actually was, nor its purpose or what it consists of. However, I think I can now write one confidently which will present the clear direction of my project. I may also continue to work on my PowerPoint as I will be presenting this soon.

Getting closer to the deadline... And feeling good?

At this point, I feel fairly comfortable with where I am with my EPQ. I am close to finishing my write up, which I will then go back and edit to make sure it is coherent and insightful, and I am about to start creating my presentation which I will be presenting on the 27th at an organised Gala evening. I still need to collate some pieces of information to go into my folder, as well as update my log book. However, I feel confident that I am in a good position. I think I may create an extra plan for my presentation as I need to be strict with time due to the little I have so having a plan will guide me with my presentation creation.

Start of presentation

On Tuesday's lesson, Chris dedicated some time to talk through a powerpoint all about our EPQ presentations, informing us about what it needs to include, when it will take place, and what it needs to achieve. I find this lesson really useful as I had no idea about what to include in my presentation as I initially thought it was basically our essay converted into a powerpoint format. However, I learnt this was untrue as it needs to also document your thought process, your journey, content, and also a reflection section. I am still in the midst of doing my write up, which I am working through quite quickly so I should have it completed soon. I will then focus my time on constructing a powerpoint which consists of these things. I also need to sort out my folder appendices and other features of my essay, such as my bibliography.

Extra research and lit review

This week has been our half term, so I decided to utilise this time off in order to catch up on research and progress further with my lit review. I have read, highlighted and annotated the journal articles I printed off, as well as review them, and I found them to be extremely useful in providing me with a deeper insight into my project. The journal articles I read are feminist and marxist critical readings of Pride and Prejudice which I thought would be significant research as my project focuses on social and economic factors, women and class/wealth included. As marxist and feminist readings focus on gender and class in particular, this enabled me to receive a profound grasp of how these topics are explored in the novel, and the extent to which the predominance of these topics in society influenced the novel. They also went into great depth about Austen's beliefs and her aims at presenting these factors in the way she did, showing the different ways in which she was influenced by her own society.

I have also progressed onwards with my lit review, in which I will include this extra research as I found many different, interesting points, some which supported, and some which contrasted with previous views I found.

Introduction

Yesterday, I finished writing the introduction to my project. I included details such as why I picked the title I did, what I plan to explore in my essay, and the different argument which may arise as I unpick the question and look at the research to use to answer it. Although Chris advised us to leave the introduction last, I thought it would be beneficial, to me personally, if I write it first as I can use it to refer back to when doing my write up. However, I am aware that the direction of my project may change as I progress further with my write up, therefore I have left an element of vagueness so I can go back and adjust it if necessary, depending on whether my essay goes in a different direction to what I expected. I am now continuing with my literature review, using my plan, while simultaneously carrying out extra research which I may choose to add into my write up. This is why I have left my introduction as quite vague as I may find a piece of research which alters the direction of my project.

Project Product Review

Yesterday, I had my project product review with my supervisor, Chris. This meeting mainly consisted of looking through my folder, which is a working progress, to check I had everything I needed to this moment. I already have a lot of the research which I have collated throughout the course of this project, with annotations and highlighting, in it, alongside my literary reviews, plan, diary entries, etc. Although I had a lot of my work in there, Chris reminded me to put everything I've touched relating to my EPQ in there as I mentioned that I haven't included other bits of planning, such as planning of initial ideas, title ideas, areas of research, etc. He said this will show the depth of my thought process and how far I've progressed from the very start to where I am now. I agreed with this as I have made a few adjustments to my project, which I have explained in my diary, but including my planning will support this explanation by showing my ideas attached to the adjustments. Chris also mentioned to add extra annotations to my research to show my thought process of the planning of my essay and my own comments on the things said by different sources. It will also show how I had linked together different sources and how they are similar/different, and what this comparison shows when relating it back to my question. Furthermore, as I am progressing forward with my final product, which is my write up, I am asked my supervisor questions relating to my introduction as I did not know what to include, and he gave me some ideas on what I could possibly include, such as a summary of Jane Austen and her work, and then descending into a break down of what my project study consists of.

Also, I should mention that I have reverted my question back to one similar to my initial question. It is now ‘To what extent is Jane Austen’s novel, Pride and Prejudice, representative of the social and economic realities of Regency England?’ When I first started to write my essay, I didn’t think I had enough research to write about just the social and economic issues of the 18^th century, therefore I decided to expand my research area. However, while putting together pieces of my research and realising the mass amount I have discovered about social and economic while using Austen’s life as a research area, and while progressing forward with my write up, I have found that I have a lot of material which I have managed to sew together into a narrative revolving around the social and economic realities of this time. My supervisor suggested to me, during my review meeting as I mentioned whether changing my title was possible due to how far we are into the project, that I still include Austen in my write up, but I could concentrate on an aspect of her literary style, which led me to bring up the idea of evaluating how her writing style may have hindered or restricted representation of 18^th century Britain in her work as I read that she has a style of writing that was evident in her works.  

My next steps in my project are to continue with annotations and adding material to my folder, progressing forward with my lit review, and continue with research while working on my lit review. I will also be writing my introduction soon, using the advice Chris gave me as a guide.

Where next?

For the past week, I have spent most of my dedicated EPQ time cutting down my research into relevant, categorised sections, such as Austen's writing style, key events, practicality of marriage, complications of love, etc. I believe doing this before I start to write my literature review will enable my writing to be more organised and understandable as I will only be talking about the key points I want to make. Furthermore, it has allowed me to effectively link together and compare/contrast different sources, which I can comment on in my review.

However, before I start writing this, I think it will benefit me best if I write my introduction first as this will mean I have a clear view of what I am aiming to achieve by the end of my essay.

I also need to continue printing everything I have collated up to now as this will mean I won't be rushing around at the last minute and I can concentrate on my presentation/essay.

Feeling under the weather

Unfortunately, this week has been one of my most unproductive weeks ever, and this is down to my new friend, the flu. The drowsiness and overall unmotivated attitude this flu has given me means I haven't progressed as much as I would have liked to, but, that being said, I have finally gotten a folder and I have started to collate my research by printing it out and putting it inside, including emails, transcripts, academic journals, etc. Printing it all out now means I won't be in a rush to gather it together closer to the deadline. Moreover, I attempted to begin writing the literature review section of my essay, but proved to be a challenge as I couldn't figure out where I was going with the research I had. Therefore, I have decided to take a step back and spend some time looking at the information I have in front of me and work through it while annotating and highlighting. As I have been doing this, I have been putting the information into a plan and writing down my initial thoughts too so I can revisit these when I actually write it. I did plan on getting the majority of this done this week so I can start writing it next week. However, I haven't gotten very far due to being ill, though I do plan on sending the majority of this weekend continuing with my plan and working through the research.

Lit Review Struggle

Chris has advised us to start our essay with the literature review and compose the other segments of writing around this. However, since this means we are diving head first into the middle of the essay, I've been struggling with how to start the review section, which research/ideas to begin with, and how I incorporate my own ideas into the comments I make on the research I have found. I mentioned my struggle to Chris today and he sat down with me and began to assist me on the beginning of the literature review section. He advised that I break my review into smaller sections as he saw that I had already sorted my research into categories relating to my project question. For example, the first section may focus on the key events in Austen's life, and then the next may focus on Regency England. Also, he reminded me of the advice he gave earlier - start with the broader ideas and gradually become more refined and specific to my project question. As I have about 27 pages of research, this means I have be spending quite a lot of time going through the information I gathered from each source and picking out the key information and ideas I want to use in my essay.

Also, Chris once again reminded us to get a folder and dividers so we can start to collate all of our work and research together... looks like I will be going shopping this weekend.

Organizing my research

It is getting to that time where I need to start writing the literature review, but as I have gathered a lot of research material I need to concentrate on sorting it out by linking information together and comparing/contrasting them. Although I wish to continue with my research, I need to spend some time sorting through the information I already have before I can progress as establishing links between different sources will make it easier for me when writing my literature review.

Therefore, my next step will be to go through my individual source reviews, reflect on the main ideas which I extracted from these sources, and see if I can identify links between certain sources. I can refer to these links in my literature review and how it relates to my project. Furthermore, I can distinguish if the information leans in support of my project aim, or against it, and then I can talk about this in my review.

Thinking about essay planning and literature reviews

As I said on Tuesday, Chris had found an informative textbook that concentrates on projects and how the process should be carried out in steps. Chris advised us to look at chapter 6 which focuses on how to approach the essay writing aspect of the project,  including some helpful tips and possible headings of paragraphs. I spent today's session looking at this guided structure, and using the tips given I can now start to plan my own essay and possible ideas that I am thinking of including, as well as where these ideas will fit into the essay. It is important to plan my essay before writing, as my supervisor has emphasised many times, as I need to refrain from mistakes such as waffling on about something so it ends up taking up the majority of my word count, contradicting myself, repeating myself, wrongly using a piece of information which doesn't support an idea, confusing myself as I progress further into the writing, and jumbling up information so that it results in a messy, incoherent piece of writing. I believe this advised structure given by the textbook will help me massively when it comes to planning my essay and organising the information I have into writing, and there is always the freedom to play around with the structure into one that I feel suits my project topic best. To add to this support, he showed us a powerpoint from the University of Leeds which also shows a demonstration of a good essay structure, and the kind of headings that can be considered for each paragraphs, as well as the possibility of sub-titles.

Today, my supervisor also reminded the class the importance of literary reviews and that we need to be keeping track of our sources and our evaluation of each individual one, such as noting the credibility, the reliability, and the origins of the source. My literary review process is still on-going as I remain in the midst of carrying out research, but I feel as though I am recording and evaluating each one of my source to an valid standard.

Moreover, Chris said that we should start to think about the writing of the abstract of our essay, as well as the introduction. He showed his own dissertation as an example, which included an example of a literary review, and I plan on taking a look at when it comes to writing my introduction for support.

UPDATE ON PRIMARY RESEARCH: Still no responses back from professors!

First day back after Christmas and Mid-Project Review!

Today is the first day back after Christmas and luckily we have EPQ! I'm uncertain on the direction we have to had in next with our project and this period has reassured me massively. Before continuing with our independent objectives, Chris went through a summary of where we should be at in terms of our primary and secondary information and, as I  am this stage, I feel reassure with my project. He also reminded us that we need to keep up-to-date with our log books as we don't want to be rushing around at the end trying to piece it altogether.

As the essay writing is becoming even more imminent, Chris reminded us that we need to be getting our heads down in research so we have a sufficient amount of information to work with. He also mentioned that he had printed out a textbook that aims at supporting with writing essay and how it should be structured, so I plan on looking at this to assist me with my essay, therefore I will be more confident with planning, as well as writing the my essay.

Also, as we didn't get chance to have our Mid-Project review meeting before christmas, I requested to have it today as I felt that I made a lot of progress during the Christmas holidays and I wanted to discuss with Chris my change the planning of my tasks, as well as how to separate the research I had found, which I had typed up. He advised me, as I had around twenty seven pages of a typed up research, to separate the information based on possible subheadings that I may use in my write up, such as the role of women, complications of love, Austen's writing style, key events, family life, etc, with the reference of the source above it so I can easily track where it came from. I believe this will help a lot when I arrive at writing the section of the essay where I will be incorporating and referencing much of this research. He also encouraged that I read through this information, highlighting and annotating the key pieces of information that stand out as vital or interesting, and will enable me to form a clear narrative. Furthermore, as I was unable to find the date for some of the information that I found online, I asked Chris what to put in replacement as I was initially using (XXXX). He looked it up, as he was unsure to, and found that the best method to put '(n.d.)', which I will use during my write up. I think I forgot to method that I have decided to use Harvard referencing for my product as it is the most common for academic research papers and I have found it, generally, the easiest to understand and use.

Essay ideas!

As I am progressing forward with my research, I am starting to come up with a lot of ideas that I may want to include in my essay when I arrive at the writing process. I have come to realise that I need to record these ideas as the creation of the end-product of our project is very near, therefore I need to start focusing on what I am going to write about, as well as the research. Recording them as I continue with my research will be useful for when I come to plan and write my essay as I can reflect on my previous ideas and expand/develop them with newly conjured ideas that I received from new information.