I have now reached roughly the middle of my time on my EPQ project and will now proceed to review and evaluate my progress up till now so I understand what I’m doing well, what I need to do next and what I need to change or improve to make my project run better/have a btetter outcome. Hopefully this will aid me by giving me an idea of where I am in the grand scheme of my EPQ so I know where I am and where I need to be in order to keep on track with deadlines.
My aim for the Summer Holidays was mainly researching Alexander the Great so I could have a skeleton of a plan by the end of it - meaning I had areas of research I could dive in to more to make up the ‘big points’ or areas of discussion for my dissertation. I believe this has been going quite well because I now know a lot more about Alexander the Great than I did when I started, I have achieved this by doing a lot of reading; at the beginning of Summer I was mainly reading the works of modern historians like Paul Cartledge to get a good overview of Alexander as a person and his life in general which has been very useful in setting the context and indeed suggesting a few tentative ideas for my dissertation. I think that my research has been so successful so far because I have made a conscious effort to keep my final aim in mind - my dissertation - as I read all these texts and sources to keep me focused, reading with an aim in mind has helped me pick out the most relevant ideas and content which is useful and I shall therefore keep this research habit up as I go forwards.
I have also delved into contemporary literature on Alexander, this was something that did concern me from the beginning of my EPQ - the quantity and ease of access of such sources. I have found that with the internet it has been easier than expected to get hold of. For instance I was able to find a PDF of Arrian’s works on Alexander on the Cornell University Library website and Plutarch’s entire works for free on kindle which I was able to download onto my phone. This has gone well as they are all translations, however I found Arrian harder to read as it was a translation from the 19th Century so the language in places was a little confusing but I read it with a dictionary next to me which aided my understanding and I have since learnt not to gloss over words I don’t understand but to look them up to ensure I have complete understanding of the text. I annotated and picked out key quotes from these contemporary sources and put all of this into word documents and then rearranged them into themes (military, character etc.), this has helped me organise my thoughts on how I want to go about answering my question and should prove useful further down the line when I don’t have to reread all these sources just to find the quotes I need but have them already. This has informed my future plans as it has shown me that contemporary sources can be found and I would therefore like to see if I can find more, it has shown me a good way to work with the sources so I can save time later by already having quotes and analysis - doing this also aided my understanding of what the authors were trying to say which was helpful.
With all of these sources and reading I have also made sure to frequently update my literature review which, when I first wrote it, I found very difficult to do. However since then the amount of reading and new knowledge on Alexander I have now has meant I was able to organise it into an easier format - for instance a section on contemporary sources which has made it easier. Therefore in the future rather than make every source fit into a certain category in my literature review I will try and tailor the categories to the sources which, from experience I have found less challenging to do than the former.
The final benefit of all my summer research has been that I achieved my aim of having a, admittedly tentative and highly susceptible to change, plan for my dissertation - almost a plan of a plan. The good thing about this is that it means I can narrow down my research more into these areas that I have found that I feel would be relevant to my title and would be interesting to use in my dissertation. This in turn has given me more confidence in my project as I feel like I know what I am doing and that I am moving forwards. However this plan is anything but final and I want to change and update it with new ideas as I continue my research so I can write a really good dissertation when it comes round to it.
Not everything has gone according to plan however, I underestimated the quantity of work I had from other subjects to do this summer which took up a lot more time and therefore ate into the time I had previously designated to doing research for my EPQ. This has meant my organisation hasn’t been as good as it was during term time, I have still got an amount done that I am happy with but rather than it being spread throughout the holidays like I had planned it was all focused together after I’d finished everything else which wasn’t the plan. This will help me improve in the future as it has made me realise that I am prone to underestimating how much time a task will take me so whenever I plan something next I will always add an amount of time to make sure that I will be able to stick to any organisation I do which should improve my time management.
In relation to this management issue I had I have realised that my long term plan was highly ambitious, I didn’t understand the quantity of research I needed to do so I believe I won’t be able to stick to my original as I severely underestimated the time certain tasks would take. I have therefore decided to update my long term plan from this:
My aim for the Summer Holidays was mainly researching Alexander the Great so I could have a skeleton of a plan by the end of it - meaning I had areas of research I could dive in to more to make up the ‘big points’ or areas of discussion for my dissertation. I believe this has been going quite well because I now know a lot more about Alexander the Great than I did when I started, I have achieved this by doing a lot of reading; at the beginning of Summer I was mainly reading the works of modern historians like Paul Cartledge to get a good overview of Alexander as a person and his life in general which has been very useful in setting the context and indeed suggesting a few tentative ideas for my dissertation. I think that my research has been so successful so far because I have made a conscious effort to keep my final aim in mind - my dissertation - as I read all these texts and sources to keep me focused, reading with an aim in mind has helped me pick out the most relevant ideas and content which is useful and I shall therefore keep this research habit up as I go forwards.
I have also delved into contemporary literature on Alexander, this was something that did concern me from the beginning of my EPQ - the quantity and ease of access of such sources. I have found that with the internet it has been easier than expected to get hold of. For instance I was able to find a PDF of Arrian’s works on Alexander on the Cornell University Library website and Plutarch’s entire works for free on kindle which I was able to download onto my phone. This has gone well as they are all translations, however I found Arrian harder to read as it was a translation from the 19th Century so the language in places was a little confusing but I read it with a dictionary next to me which aided my understanding and I have since learnt not to gloss over words I don’t understand but to look them up to ensure I have complete understanding of the text. I annotated and picked out key quotes from these contemporary sources and put all of this into word documents and then rearranged them into themes (military, character etc.), this has helped me organise my thoughts on how I want to go about answering my question and should prove useful further down the line when I don’t have to reread all these sources just to find the quotes I need but have them already. This has informed my future plans as it has shown me that contemporary sources can be found and I would therefore like to see if I can find more, it has shown me a good way to work with the sources so I can save time later by already having quotes and analysis - doing this also aided my understanding of what the authors were trying to say which was helpful.
With all of these sources and reading I have also made sure to frequently update my literature review which, when I first wrote it, I found very difficult to do. However since then the amount of reading and new knowledge on Alexander I have now has meant I was able to organise it into an easier format - for instance a section on contemporary sources which has made it easier. Therefore in the future rather than make every source fit into a certain category in my literature review I will try and tailor the categories to the sources which, from experience I have found less challenging to do than the former.
The final benefit of all my summer research has been that I achieved my aim of having a, admittedly tentative and highly susceptible to change, plan for my dissertation - almost a plan of a plan. The good thing about this is that it means I can narrow down my research more into these areas that I have found that I feel would be relevant to my title and would be interesting to use in my dissertation. This in turn has given me more confidence in my project as I feel like I know what I am doing and that I am moving forwards. However this plan is anything but final and I want to change and update it with new ideas as I continue my research so I can write a really good dissertation when it comes round to it.
Not everything has gone according to plan however, I underestimated the quantity of work I had from other subjects to do this summer which took up a lot more time and therefore ate into the time I had previously designated to doing research for my EPQ. This has meant my organisation hasn’t been as good as it was during term time, I have still got an amount done that I am happy with but rather than it being spread throughout the holidays like I had planned it was all focused together after I’d finished everything else which wasn’t the plan. This will help me improve in the future as it has made me realise that I am prone to underestimating how much time a task will take me so whenever I plan something next I will always add an amount of time to make sure that I will be able to stick to any organisation I do which should improve my time management.
In relation to this management issue I had I have realised that my long term plan was highly ambitious, I didn’t understand the quantity of research I needed to do so I believe I won’t be able to stick to my original as I severely underestimated the time certain tasks would take. I have therefore decided to update my long term plan from this:
to this:
I have increased the time spent on research and decreased that spent on evaluation of my entire EPQ project because from experience, from doing mid term evaluations and end of term evaluations, I have found that evaluating doesn’t actually take me as long as I first thought. I have also decreased that of proofreading as generally when I write things I proof read as I go, after every section written for instance, so the time at the end for a complete proof read should be sufficient. The benefits of these changes I have made to my long term plan will be that they should be easier to keep to as I have over estimated the time it might take for some tasks and overlapped a few so that I have time that I can go into if one thing over runs and if I don’t manage to finish in the exact deadline there is space for adjustment so it won’t mean going off schedule completely.
Another area where I have had difficulty has been in gathering primary research, although I have already sent out a questionnaire I have yet to analyse it and I would also like to email some professional historians or experts on Alexander the Great for their opinion on some questions I have, I have drafted one email, but I am concerned about whether they will reply or not as they will obviously very busy. However I realise that I won’t know unless I try so one of my targets will be to begin corresponding with at least one professional historian on the subject of my EPQ as part of my researching and hopefully this will solve my problematic lack of primary research.
This evaluation of progress has shown me that my research is going well but I need to focus on the primary side of it resulting in my aim of contacting historians. Other things I plan to do include continuing to research Alexander the Great so by the time my long term plan tells me that I need to think about planning in earnest I am ready to do so. Problems I may face might be the quantity of contemporary sources available to me as so many have been lost but I have two very good literary ones and I aim to do some analysis of more physical sources - statues for example - which should also help me with obtaining primary research however I may face difficulties in analysing something I know little about (for instance statues again) so I may need to do a little more research before I feel ready for that. Overall I plan to finish researching, then plan my dissertation, then write it and evaluate it so by the 1st of December my entire project is finished up to a standard i am happy with and handed in on time.
Another area where I have had difficulty has been in gathering primary research, although I have already sent out a questionnaire I have yet to analyse it and I would also like to email some professional historians or experts on Alexander the Great for their opinion on some questions I have, I have drafted one email, but I am concerned about whether they will reply or not as they will obviously very busy. However I realise that I won’t know unless I try so one of my targets will be to begin corresponding with at least one professional historian on the subject of my EPQ as part of my researching and hopefully this will solve my problematic lack of primary research.
This evaluation of progress has shown me that my research is going well but I need to focus on the primary side of it resulting in my aim of contacting historians. Other things I plan to do include continuing to research Alexander the Great so by the time my long term plan tells me that I need to think about planning in earnest I am ready to do so. Problems I may face might be the quantity of contemporary sources available to me as so many have been lost but I have two very good literary ones and I aim to do some analysis of more physical sources - statues for example - which should also help me with obtaining primary research however I may face difficulties in analysing something I know little about (for instance statues again) so I may need to do a little more research before I feel ready for that. Overall I plan to finish researching, then plan my dissertation, then write it and evaluate it so by the 1st of December my entire project is finished up to a standard i am happy with and handed in on time.