This morning I had my final project presentation at the ungodly hour of 10am. I got a bit toasted by Alexander Voss but on the whole they seemed impressed. One bit didn’t work because I’m a complete muppet and was doing something wrong but I think I blagged it. Now, onto some tips:
- Self-Propose. Doing something you want to do, rather than something that some lecturer wants doing is overall much more satisifying. You also don’t end with something that you are proud of but its not quite what your supervisor wanted.
- Pick your supervisor wisely. Your supervisor has to be interested in your project and keen enough to want to help. I know lots of people whos supervisor was always away or busy and offered no help at all.
- Log your work. I should have been doing this from the start. Some kind of log is very, very useful. Written or online, it doesn’t matter just record everything you do. This is immensely useful when writing up the implementation and saying why you did something that way you did.
- Comment your code. I know we have it drummed into us from first year but it really is very useful. If you’re using something like javadoc do the comments in the correct style. It will save time later, time which you won’t have.
- Be honest. Don’t try and blag anything with smoke and mirrors. Three people who are most likely cleverer than you are going to look at your project. If you try some shenanigans they will ask you to show them X in your presentation. Then you’re boned…