Student writes his entire dissertation in one 40-hour sitting, gets a 2:1 - Polidicks

Some people don't really need to take as long preparing to write essays or other homework than other people. I was one of those guys who would just take notes in class, study for an hour the day before a big exam, and get an A, even in hard classes like "Current Issues in Behavioral Neuroscience." Other people have to spend days and nights studying over and over again to get ready for an exam. For me there's a con to it though. I'm a great test taker but I barely retain anything afterwards. Two years of Russian Language courses, straight A's every semester, barely remember a lick of it. I have to reread my notes to remember simple shit like "who created Cognitive Behavioral Therapy" (got asked this in a job interview, couldn't answer, pretty sure that was a big factor into not getting the job).

Hahaha what!? A 10,000 word dissertation? I've thrown together essays in one night that were 5,000+ words (Not like that's even anything to brag about), and this is for an entire PhD!? I have colleagues who have put in 500+ hours into their [I]masters[/I] theses, and apparently a Doctorate in Philosophy can be thrown together in a single 40 hours cramming session!? I mean, I'm sure he deserves credit for knowing enough to be able to throw together something so important in so little time... But I don't know what it reflects more upon, the talents of the student or the quality of the department. [editline]28th March 2015[/editline] I mean I won't shit on him because obviously the kid knows what he's doing... But I'd imagine this really speaks ill of the university that he attended.

[QUOTE=Occlusion;47409120]If you did this for a CS/Any science dissertation you would get absolutely fucked by the marker. Edit : Also why did this guy go public with this? I mean, good for him, but if i was an employer and i saw that i'd have second thoughts.[/QUOTE] If I was an employer, I would see that this kid can bang out very high quality material under pressure in a very short timeframe [editline]28th March 2015[/editline] I mean, it's a philosophy major so I'm sure the manager at the Starbucks he applies to will have no issues hiring him.

I pull this shit off all the time

So much circlejerking in this thread.

[QUOTE=FunnyBunny;47411020]Hahaha what!? A 10,000 word dissertation? I've thrown together essays in one night that were 5,000+ words (Not like that's even anything to brag about), and this is for an entire PhD!? I have colleagues who have put in 500+ hours into their [I]masters[/I] theses, and apparently a Doctorate in Philosophy can be thrown together in a single 40 hours cramming session!? I mean, I'm sure he deserves credit for knowing enough to be able to throw together something so important in so little time... But I don't know what it reflects more upon, the talents of the student or the quality of the department. [editline]28th March 2015[/editline] I mean I won't shit on him because obviously the kid knows what he's doing... But I'd imagine this really speaks ill of the university that he attended.[/QUOTE] This isn't for a PhD, this is for a bachelor's degree

[QUOTE=FunnyBunny;47411020]Hahaha what!? A 10,000 word dissertation? I've thrown together essays in one night that were 5,000+ words (Not like that's even anything to brag about), and this is for an entire PhD!? I have colleagues who have put in 500+ hours into their [I]masters[/I] theses, and apparently a Doctorate in Philosophy can be thrown together in a single 40 hours cramming session!? I mean, I'm sure he deserves credit for knowing enough to be able to throw together something so important in so little time... But I don't know what it reflects more upon, the talents of the student or the quality of the department. [editline]28th March 2015[/editline] I mean I won't shit on him because obviously the kid knows what he's doing... But I'd imagine this really speaks ill of the university that he attended.[/QUOTE] My final year masters thesis is guided to be about 10,000 words, the reason is so you learn to be concise and get to the point on your research and present it nicely. Nobody wants to read an extra 5000 words of bullshit [editline]28th March 2015[/editline] Meanwhile on the bachelor's version of my course, their final year project report is guided at 13000-15000 words

My dissertation at Uni was a short story. Thx creative writing (with journalism) degree.

Wait what. I'm just now learning that there is a massive essay at the end of all this college bullshit? Fuck that I'm dropping out.

[QUOTE=gonedead0;47411352]Wait what. I'm just now learning that there is a massive essay at the end of all this college bullshit? Fuck that I'm dropping out.[/QUOTE] Good job getting into debt for nothing And undergrads having to do a dissertation at the end of their degree is news to me, I don't have to do one for either of my Bachelor degrees. Dissertations are postgrad, Honours at the least. [editline]28th March 2015[/editline] Also it's only 10,000 words that's nothing mate, that's like a single assignment in a third year course

[QUOTE=dookster;47408449]I may get a lot of dumbs for this but this kind of shit was what I hated about University. I'd bust my ass, spending months working on my project, giving up social time and sleep to be in the labs and I managed a 2:1 while people who do little to nothing or everything at the literal last minute were walking out with Firsts. I know it's not a perfect system but goddamn if it doesn't feel damn unfair sometimes.[/QUOTE] Uni is all about learning to game the system. The real winners in uni are the ones who know just how much bullshit it all is for 90% of majors and that its simply a huge waste of time to slave over any project you aren't super personally invested in or isn't going to look great on a resume/portfolio I legit feel sorry for my peers who spend countless hours working on projects, slaving over them and spending hours studying every week when all I can think of is, "wow are they doing it wrong or what", as I do the same assignment in 5X less time, getting the same grade. Last semester I turned in two final papers for a historical analysis course that I literally pretty much did the week it was due even though we were encouraged to gather sources and work on it all semester. Got almost a perfect score, meanwhile some of my friends who went as far as doing weekly group meets to work on it got a worse grade. Of course I've gotten good at procrastinating like that over the years, its easy to do the above and end up screwing yourself over if you are new. But then it doesn't really matter because it turns out a lot of teachers really don't like giving grades lower than a C unless its [I]really[/I] bad, and a C/B grade in the long run is pointless as long as your entire GPA doesn't end up straight C's. That is assuming you care about GPA anyways, because fact is even employers of STEM subjects don't tend to care about it (it is relevant if you want to get into a good masters program or get a scholarship). The reality is almost nothing you do in uni matters, the only thing that does is the degree you get at the end. Once you know this, people who are obsessed with efficiency and [I]good at it[/I] (this is key) will find that it an insane waste of time to slave over tests/projects/etc. I've rarely studied for a test longer than an hour as a quick refresher and I almost always get A's on them. It is all about optimizing your time to get the best result for the amount of minutes spent working on something. With me working a job outside of classes, [I]I don't have time[/I] to spend 20 hours working on a project, and I honestly don't care enough about it to devote that kind of time to it either. The path of least resistance, with the best results is a path that is always worth investigating. That said there is a real danger with doing uni like this, it makes it easy to develop a poor work ethic. For some things in life, it really is worth spending 20+ hours on something. You don't want bad work ethic, so ideally by saving time from not worrying about the massive time waste that many uni projects are you make up for it by doing work/projects on your own time that are going to be [I]vastly[/I] more relevant to your resume (and look much better since you did em on your own time).

[QUOTE=Antdawg;47411438]Good job getting into debt for nothing And undergrads having to do a dissertation at the end of their degree is news to me, I don't have to do one for either of my Bachelor degrees. Dissertations are postgrad, Honours at the least. [editline]28th March 2015[/editline] Also it's only 10,000 words that's nothing mate, that's like a single assignment in a third year course[/QUOTE] This is the UK, dissertations at the end of courses are something everyone does no matter what uni, no mater what course. Actual content of the dissertation can change though, most times it's essays, for my CS course it's an individual project where you actually have to produce some program at the end (Essay goes along with it but it's a lot shorter than other subjects).

[QUOTE=ExplodingGuy;47408428]This is why no one likes philosophy majors.[/QUOTE] im a comp sci major, i minor in philosophy, and totally agree I didn't go to about 90% of lectures for one course which consisted of 1 essay and then 1 final. Wrote the essay at the end of the year 1 week before the final, got a 90%, and then wrote the final and got a 70% for a 77% in the course. My essay was just me spewing bullshit and linking it together with some logical bullshit, cite some shit here and here, done and I only studied for 3 days on topics for the exam. I know if I did this for any comp-sci course, i'd be fucked, there's no way, but in this course, the prof thought I was a genius lol

I've taken philosophy classes before and really there's nothing in there that you couldn't learn outside skimming wikipedia.

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;47412458]I've taken philosophy classes before and really there's nothing in there that you couldn't learn outside skimming wikipedia.[/QUOTE] Then you took absolutely shitty philosophy courses. I'm a philosophy major, and if I say, crammed for a test or major paper solely using Wikipedia, I would fail before I even signed my name on the essay. Now if you took "a philosophy class" at the 100 level, then sure! Hooray, you've accomplished a semester of being guided through Wikipedia articles by the nose. But I can say that of literally any class. I've taken chemistry classes before and really there's nothing in there that I didn't learn from Wikipedia.

Sounds like an average Philosophy undergrad in the UK tbh. Having lived with one for three years I'm fairly familiar with their "workload", the guy I lived with was also a high achiever, I think he maybe got less than 75% once in the entire degree. But he spent most of his time finishing my games on my PS3 before me, reading poetry for fun in the same rooms that people were trying to work in, then telling us about it when we were clearly busy, and just faffing around with other humanities students. He now works as a proof reader for an educational materials group or something. Not entirely sure what that has to do with philosophy, but then again I can't think of much outside of academia that has a lot to do with it. Better than him working as a server or something, he'd bore everyone to death talking about Nietzsche rather than serving them.

[QUOTE=EditOutJ;47408350]God damn it. I'm a horrible procrastinator, and stories like this don't help me out at all. Marvelous effort there for him. [sp]im procrasinating right now god fucking damn it[/sp][/QUOTE] Yeah, I'm supposed to be writing a 3+ page essay over petroleum for Engish class right now. I keep looking at it and going "or fuck that."

[QUOTE=Flapadar;47409157]If you know exactly what you're doing beforehand - it's possible to produce it in a week and pump out a report. There's at least one person in my class (honours year CS) doing that.[/QUOTE] What he's saying is if this was a science based dissertation he would have had to fabricate data to even have a shot, basically the dissertation would be a fake as you are making the results the same as the predicted results and fabricating data to prove it which is academic dishonesty [editline]28th March 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=Crazy Ivan;47412558] I've taken chemistry classes before and really there's nothing in there that I didn't learn from Wikipedia.[/QUOTE] You don't learn chemistry from Wikipedia, you think you learn chemistry from Wikipedia. My Chem books have volumes of stuff that Wikipedia doesn't and none of my chemical engineering stuff is even in wikipedia Nobody really can take college level courses from wikipedia

Subject and such aside, he was given 6 months to write 10,000 words? Really?

[QUOTE=demoguy08;47414608]Subject and such aside, he was given 6 months to write 10,000 words? Really?[/QUOTE] pretty sure 10,000 [I]minimum[/I], with the expectation to be somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 maximum, but as the internet has shown in the past, philosophy majors and professionals are pretty weird and lax

[QUOTE=demoguy08;47414608]Subject and such aside, he was given 6 months to write 10,000 words? Really?[/QUOTE]Well constructed 10k are worth more than stretched out 100k

[QUOTE=demoguy08;47414608]Subject and such aside, he was given 6 months to write 10,000 words? Really?[/QUOTE] dissertations are a major part of our bachelor degree. why? i don't know. i'm an animation student and i have a major project + report in place of a written dissertation, so that makes sense to me what i will say is that i fucking loath the grading system in universities. 40+ to pass, 50+ for a 2:2, 60+ for a 2:1 and 70+ for a 1st. that's 60% of the system that's basically useless. no one looks at your specific grades for each unit, they only care what grade your degree was. to have a first delegated to 70% makes it harder for those who might have had small mishaps befall them to get a 1st and it also means that people who work super hard and get like, 90% fucking wasted their time.

[QUOTE=Flapadar;47409157]If you know exactly what you're doing beforehand - it's possible to produce it in a week and pump out a report. There's at least one person in my class (honours year CS) doing that.[/QUOTE] Trust me, you couldn't do that with any non-theoretical field.

[QUOTE=Zenreon117;47408441]The best essays are written when it feels like hell encroaches upon you. You say procrastination, I say preparation.[/QUOTE] I didn't go to university but my girlfriend did, she always got her best marks on the essays she wrote through the night on the day of deadline

[QUOTE=Doozle;47414681]I didn't go to university but my girlfriend did, she always got her best marks on the essays she wrote through the night on the day of deadline[/QUOTE] The tired high is one hell of a drug. Once it kicks in you can really feel like you could move mountains.

[QUOTE=itisjuly;47414781]The tired high is one hell of a drug. Once it kicks in you can really feel like you could move mountains.[/QUOTE] I think most people call that your "second wind"

[QUOTE=demoguy08;47414608]Subject and such aside, he was given 6 months to write 10,000 words? Really?[/QUOTE] It's not just the word count that takes up the time. With dissertations you've got to find something original to write about and do a whole lot of independent research into the field, whilst working around your other assignments. [editline]29th March 2015[/editline] Unless you do philosophy, apparently.

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;47412458]I've taken philosophy classes before and really there's nothing in there that you couldn't learn outside skimming wikipedia.[/QUOTE] you've done some pretty weak philosophy did you read the wikipedia article on john stuart mill and decide that you're conquered ethics?

[QUOTE=Jund;47408344]how do you get a 2:1 with no references[/QUOTE] Philosophy isn't a real field anymore

[QUOTE=Jund;47408344]how do you get a 2:1 with no references[/QUOTE] If bad reading was a rating you'd probably have like 300 of them [quote=the literal fucking sentence before that one]: "I had read one whole book on the general area. [I]I spent about 70% or 80% of the night doing the first third, with references and all that kind of academic stuff like you're supposed to. [/I]And then running out of time with no chance to read any more books [/quote] though I think that means he used just one book to reference from :v: