Honours project help!

casson2006

I am doin a honours degree in forensic science, and i have 2 decide wot to do for my honours project before i go back! We have been given no guidence, so i was wondering if anyone has done one in this area? or just in general what do you have to do?? is it just the same as a dissertation?

tazzababe

Hiya, Whe I go back I will be doing my Honors project too. I think that you should phone a member of staff to find out what you need to do.
In my case (I phoned last week) I only have to have an idea-nothing concrete. At my uni there is one member of staff that deals with the students idea submisions and then its her job to assign people to other tutors- tutors that are best equipped to advise. From what I understand of my project I will have to write an outline about 1500 words and then the main part-dissertation is about 10,000 words. Just phone them say you have no idea what your supposed to be doing- but if I were you I would get it done quick because they will all be going on their hols soon, when I phoned there were 2 staff in.
Hope this helps;)

casson2006

Thanks.
Yeh we have already been signed up to a tutor and been given an area, but my area is just general forensics!! Just dnt have a clue wot 2do, but guess i could email my tutor!!

Basil_Fawlty

casson2006 wrote:

Thanks.
Yeh we have already been signed up to a tutor and been given an area, but my area is just general forensics!! Just dnt have a clue wot 2do, but guess i could email my tutor!!

This sounds a lot like the way ours are being administered. I'm doing Medical Biochemistry (hopefully I'll enter the third year see here) where we are assigned a supervisor then have a discussion with him (no females in our biochem dept! ) regarding our interests and what techniques/areas we're good at or would like to follow or maybe avoid.

There is no topic as such - for genetics however they have a massive scrum for defined projects. Luckily in my scheme we are allowed a lot of flexibility.

I'd suggest emailing/phoning your supervisor and have a chat - you'll get to know him/her very well next year and I'm guessing you won't be the only one so if you contact ahead of the others then they will probably have a good impression of you :T

Hope this helps

spaceage

casson2006

Aww i am sorry to hear that, i know what u mean i always get 1st in practicals, reports, coursework etc, and my exams bring my mark down aswell!! i am averaging about 50% at the moment, and now my hopes of a 2:1 are failing fast.
Dont let it put you off, i know its easier said than done!! I find that doing past papers seems to help! I really hope it goes well for you!!
Thanks for the advice, ive emailed my tutor. (He taught me chemistry in the 1st year and he is the oldest most boringest tutor ive ever had hehe)

Basil_Fawlty

casson2006 wrote:

Aww i am sorry to hear that, i know what u mean i always get 1st in practicals, reports, coursework etc, and my exams bring my mark down aswell!! i am averaging about 50% at the moment, and now my hopes of a 2:1 are failing fast.
Dont let it put you off, i know its easier said than done!! I find that doing past papers seems to help! I really hope it goes well for you!!
Thanks for the advice, ive emailed my tutor. (He taught me chemistry in the 1st year and he is the oldest most boringest tutor ive ever had hehe)

Thanks - I'm waiting for the admin guy to get back to me with some news about how many resits I can fail. It's not a good attitude I know but hey, a degree is more tactical than anything.

My tutor is also old, boring and an assh*le he doesn't reply to emails at all for weeks then gets annoyed when he sends us one saying "you have a tutorial this wed" just 2 days before, to our univ email account then whines if somebody doesn't check it soon enough :rolleyes:

Keep me posted what your project is!! There's a chance I'll get something in the way of snake venom toxicity but that depends on me getting through!

viru.doshi

Pretty much a similar story with my computer science degree. Onus was on us to choose a topic for our project and decide what exactly we'll be doing and why. Our tutors never gave answers, only vague sorta "yeh you're on the right lines" - unless they think you're totally gonna balls it mine didn't give much help.

Something that might be useful is to see your department head or the person who oversee's all major projects and see if you can get examples of what previous years students did, good for ideas maybe.

Good luck to the both of you.

melancholly

i know that in a lot of cases bright students are encouraged to do most of it on their own, because if supervisors give a lot of guidance and tell them what to do then they can't give the student marks for planning it all themselves. if you can come up with an idea and then have a meeting at the start of the year to talk about it, that woudl probably help - they'll be much happier to deal with someone with any idea (however rubbish or great it may be!) rather than someone who comes and syas 'i don't know what to do' and needs spoonfeeding.

good luck - you're thinking earlier than a lot of people (i've seen 3rd years start their projects 10 days before the deadline!)

Basil_Fawlty

melancholly wrote:

good luck - you're thinking earlier than a lot of people (i've seen 3rd years start their projects 10 days before the deadline!)

Not in a science degree they don't!!

casson2006

spaceage wrote:

Thanks - I'm waiting for the admin guy to get back to me with some news about how many resits I can fail. It's not a good attitude I know but hey, a degree is more tactical than anything.

My tutor is also old, boring and an assh*le he doesn't reply to emails at all for weeks then gets annoyed when he sends us one saying "you have a tutorial this wed" just 2 days before, to our univ email account then whines if somebody doesn't check it soon enough :rolleyes:

Keep me posted what your project is!! There's a chance I'll get something in the way of snake venom toxicity but that depends on me getting through!

Hey so have you herd anymore about your resits yet?? Typically i have emailed my tutor but of course no reply yet!!
Ive emailed my head of year and he said il just have to waite for him 2contact me, so guess il just have to waite!

melancholly

spaceage wrote:

Not in a science degree they don't!!

i'm in a department that requires experiments to be done - and they do! it scares me, but they do! there's a handful in every year!