Dissertation: a piece of writing designed to drain your soul of all joy and plunge you into an endless cycle of regret and paranoia that this one paper is going to tank your academic career and ruin all your future prospects.
That’s how I’m feeling right now, anyway. I chose what I thought was an interesting topic: Technology: Social Killer or Interaction Saviour? I’m not even sold on the title, but what I wanted to do was look in depth at the issue of whether various types of technology have made people more or less interactive, and set the issue to rights once and for all. At least, in my head. And in the heads of the people who end up reading my paper (that is, my professors and no one else).
Ironically, I’ve been having trouble contacting people. It’s the end of the semester and everyone is rushing to get their final pieces done. All the game design course people are feverishly working on their final products, all the web design course people are staying up until 4am every night/morning so they can put the finishing touches on their websites and…well, the software design people are locked away in the lab. They have it really hard, so I’m told. That leaves the amount of technology-based people around the campus scarce, and I was counting on them being my main talking point in the paper. Guess I’ll just have to broaden my horizons a bit.
I was thinking of heading along to Lawrence Corp and asking to speak to some of their web developers, or anyone who’ll consent to talk to me. They’re a young tech company with a meteoric rise through the ranks, so they must have some fresh blood with ideas that’ll fill a few thousand words. You know, people who are fresh out of their swanky Melbourne software development course and are filled with world-changing vigour. That’s what I’m hoping, anyway. Not that I’m expecting an interview with Mr Lawrence himself, but…wow, that’d be nice. Maybe he wants a bit of publicity…?
-Alice