Goodbye Dissertation

I have finally handed in the thing! I never have to think about Tudor adaptations again but for those of you who aren't on my course and have no idea what I'm on about this is the general gist of the research:

The main premise was talking about adapting novel to film which is pretty much the only thing we see these days in movies and television. I put a twist to the research and discussed historical adaptations of the Tudor period instead so I could look at mis-representation of history and how it effects the audience's learning. I thought I'd do this because I thought I liked history and the Tudors especially, BIG MISTAKE! I've literally ruined any liking I had of Tudor adaptations and never want to see one again!

Basically lots of historians think that if a film tells the audience that Anne Boleyn slept with her brother then everyone will think its true even though it was just scandalous rumour from the court (who doesn't like a bit of gossip?!) However, others say that the audience aren't THAT stupid to think that everything in a drama is true? 

Well I did a survey and found that (hooray!) we're NOT that stupid which is just brilliant, so I'm really glad I wrote 10,000 words about that.

I had quite a lot of interest in this dissertation at the start so I probably should have written this post back then, but now I'm cynical and glad to have it out of my life. Anyone else writing a diss at the moment I feel for you and you will get through it (for tips to keep on track see here) 

However, for me, I'm very much looking forward to my freedom and getting gazeeboed with my fellow BATVers and my sister is visting for the week yay! 

Procrastination

I hold my hands up, I am an AWFUL procrastinator. I'll be writing an essay for about 5 minutes and I'll get restless, check my twitter, blog, Pinterest and any other website I simply can. Not the most productive thing for a degree.

However, I've now found the perfect tool to stop me from doing it (as much!) it's called RescueTime and its an app which you install onto your computer and it records how you use the internet, all day everyday.

It therefore guilt trips me into thinking "I should do some work otherwise my RescueTime will think I'm inefficient" and the sight of the graph which tells me I've been on Twitter for 2 hours in one day is enough to make anyone look at themselves differently!

It doesn't have the prettiest interface but it is clear and useful, it will tell you what websites you've been on and for how long by day, week and month.

You categorise which websites or applications are distracting (the red columns), neutral (the purple columns) and efficient (the blue columns). Once you've got that set up you just leave it on in the background and find out your shocking results later on.

I have obviously shown you a graph from when I had been particularly good, I'm not showing you the terribly inefficient ones but trust me they were ALL red!

It can also show you when you've been the most efficient, whether you're an early bird or a night typer you'll find out your best times for working using this tool.

They email you with a weekly newsletter summarising your progress too so you really can't hide from your procrastination anymore!

So before you start that essay the night before, download this app (for free!) and start making all of your graphs a pretty blue!

This is the website to download: https://www.rescuetime.com/ and follow the link to download!