The Dissertation + Library Training

Yep, it's reality time.  By July 31, 2010, I must turn in a 25,000 word thesis.  Yikes!

This week we had a 'mandatory' Dissertation Talk with our program (aka programme) director.  It was actually quite helpful.  The usual bit about plagiarism, citations, timeliness, etc., but also some helpful tips on finding a topic that works for you.  Then of course there were the humorous yet scary stories of people who lost points for going over the word limits, people who emailed their dissertation DRAFT to their supervising professor the night before it was due (!), etc.

I should probably invest in this book.

One of the reasons I applied for my LLM at Trinity was because it's a program where you take classes that interest you, not classes that the school tells you are required for your degree.  Our program director encouraged us to use this opportunity to take classes that are completely unrelated to what we are writing our dissertation on.  At first I thought this odd, but I agree with him overall. 

I'm writing my dissertation on some aspect of pharmaceutical product liability.  I don't know exactly what that particular aspect is yet, but that's my main topic.  I'm taking the PL class this term and next term I will take Medicine & the Law, which I think will help with my dissertation.  However, for the remaining 2 classes each term, I think it would be great to take a class in something that I've never learned before, something completely different than my thesis topic. 

Also, we are allowed to sit in on as many classes as our little hearts desire, so I will try to do that this term and definitely next term, when the class offerings seem even better than this term's.  I'd love to take a human rights class or an environmental law class.  There is also an EU travel and tourism class this term, so I'll try to sit in on one of those!  Kathy, maybe they will need tips from you?

We also had our mandatory library training.  Ugh.  Sorry to be a nay-sayer, but the librarian was not very student-friendly.  Rachel, you should come to Dublin at the beginning of each term and give the library talk!  Or at least train the staff here.  It was a painful 1 hour, wherein I didn't learn much.  Luckily I already know Lexis and Westlaw, so the Irish and UK versions of those are pretty much the same.  There are other legal databases that we have access to, but after this library session it's apparent to me that we'll just need to train ourselves.  Happy days.