Kayleigh Jones graduated with a 1st Class Honours Degree in Events Management in 2017. She did extremely well in her dissertation which focused on how event managers create prestige value for corporate VIPs. Kayleigh’s tutor Dr Miguel Moital challenged her to prepare a manuscript based on her dissertation to be submitted to the European Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Recreation. To Kayleigh’s and Miguel’s delight, the paper was accepted after very minor modifications (which shows the high quality of the submission). The article is free to download from the publishers website.

In this post, Kayleigh talks about the experience of doing her dissertation and shares her feelings upon seeing it published.

What was the biggest lesson you learned from doing the dissertation?

The most important thing I learnt from writing a dissertation is that it is so beneficial to step back from your work and just sit and think for a few minutes, hours or even days! I always used to think that if I wasn’t writing anything down I wasn’t getting anywhere. However, one of the most useful points I took away from a supervision meeting with Miguel was that I needed to just step back, look at what I had found from my research and just think about it before writing about it. Once I eventually began to think more and type less everything began to fall into place.

Were there any other lessons you’ve learned?

I have also learnt to write information in a more concise manner. Every piece of university work I completed I would be 100s if not 1000s over the word count and this also was apparent in my dissertation. However I learnt to phrase sentences differently and present information in a different, much more concise way.

How has the dissertation experience impacted on how you do your job?

I learnt a lot about the event industry too. Interviewing event managers who have been in the industry for years was fascinating as they all had different experiences yet they all were employing the underlying principles illustrated by the V.I.P Framework that I developed in the dissertation. All of my learnings from writing a dissertation now aid my success at work. I aim to think more, write less and interact with the VIPs within my current corporation according to the V.I.P Framework.

How did you feel when you saw your paper published?

Seeing my dissertation published makes me feel extremely proud. My dissertation was by far the biggest individual project I have worked on while studying. I spent so many hours trying to perfect my work so seeing the hard work payoff is amazing. I am proud that I have also generated a piece of work which can be added to the body of knowledge within the events industry and I look forward to showing future employers what I am capable of.