May was a big month in uni terms, as we had three difficult assignments, forming an entire module. We also had our last taught lecture block, so technically we finished uni on May 7th.

Our final day of uni started with the group presentations we had been preparing since the start of April. While presentations are my least-favourite type of assignment, I wasn’t excessively scared about this one, as we’d been able to go through our scripts multiple times and work on each others answers.

We ended up with a Distinction for our presentation, which I’m very happy about; normally hearing the word “presentation” sends all expectations about doing well straight out of the window, so to do well on one was surprising.

Next up, our final essay, which was a content analysis. This was something a lot of people on the course had never encountered before, so there was a lot of guesswork and maybe answers in trying to figure out what to do. Eventually, a group of us spent the days leading up to hand-in sequestered in the library, basically teaching each other what to do. I was lucky in that I’d done similar types of analyses in research methods classes before, so I already had some knowledge of the structure, content, and methods expected.

I got a Distinction for the content analysis as well, mostly thanks to writing down every step of my methodology and reasons for decisions. While I’m really happy about the high score, and that my research idea turned out well, it still feels a little unfair.

On a more annoying note, our final result of the academic year was our film treatments. This assignment was the opposite of the content analysis, for me; this time, I hadn’t a clue about what to do. So my structure and template came from Google-searching, meaning I didn’t do the assignment as intended. I still passed, and they apparently liked the actual idea I proposed, but I didn’t include the theoretical/academic information we needed to put it. It’s impressive to forget the science communication in a science communication assignment, I suppose.

Getting all the results back meant I could calculate my non-dissertation marks, which came to an average of 64.5%. This makes an overall Distinction impossible, but I can still get a Merit overall if the dissertation goes well.