Getting started

For many students, the beginning of a major project is the most difficult part. Unlike other university work where the scope and direction are provided for you, a project requires you to make those decisions yourself, often before you feel confident enough to make them well. This is a natural difficulty, and recognising it is the first step towards managing it. The decisions made at the outset have consequences that run through the rest of the project: a well-chosen topic, a clearly defined aim, and a realistic plan all create conditions in which good work becomes easier to produce. Poor choices at the start, on the other hand, tend to generate problems that become progressively harder to resolve.

There is a common temptation to respond to the anxiety of getting started by plunging into activity - beginning to build something, or reading widely without a clear purpose - rather than by taking the time to think. This is understandable, but it is usually counterproductive. Time spent at the beginning making careful, well-informed decisions is rarely wasted; time spent undoing the consequences of hasty ones almost always is. The early phase of a project is precisely the moment when your choices are most consequential and most reversible, which makes it the best time to think them through thoroughly.

If you are approaching a major academic project for the first time, it is especially important not to assume that the requirements are the same as those for the coursework or group projects you have done previously. As the home page discusses, academic projects at honours level and above have a significant theoretical dimension that goes beyond demonstrating technical competence. The formal requirements - assessment criteria, expectations around the literature review, the structure of the final report - vary between institutions and programmes, and sometimes between individual supervisors. Consulting those requirements at the outset, before you have committed to a direction, gives you the opportunity to make decisions that serve both the technical and the academic aims of the project.

The pages in this section address the key decisions and activities that belong to the early phase of a project. They can be read in sequence or consulted individually as the need arises. The intention is not to prescribe a rigid procedure, but to help you approach those early decisions on a sound basis.