What does Jerome say about the experience of writing his dissertation?

(Daisy=D Jerome=J)
D: Hi Jerome... I haven’t seen you for a while.
J: Hi Daisy. Yeah, they’re keeping us really busy on the postgraduate programme. But how are you? You’ll be starting your dissertation soon, won’t you?
D: Yeah... tutorials start next week... I’ve got Dr Peterson. You’ll remember it all from last year, of course!
J: It’s not something you forget easily. But seriously, although I didn’t expect to enjoy writing my dissertation... and in fact I didn’t really find it much fun, I wouldn’t have missed the experience... I found it really improved my understanding of the whole degree programme, you know, from the first year on...
D: Right.
J: So what are you doing yours on?
D: Glaciated landscapes... although I haven’t decided exactly what aspect yet.
J: I did mine on climate systems, so I can’t help you much I’m afraid.  But you’ll be fine once you start your tutorials... Dr Peterson’ll help you focus.
D: I know, and he’ll set me deadlines for the different stages... which is what I need. My concern is that I’ve got tons of material on the topic, and I won’t be able to stick to the word limit, you know.
J: Hmm. I remember I had different concerns when I was doing my dissertation.
D: Last year?
J: Yeah... before my first tutorial I did a lot of fairly general reading ’cause I hadn’t fixed on my topic at that stage. I actually enjoyed that quite a lot and really improved my reading speed, you know, so I was getting through a lot of material. I was frightened I wouldn’t remember it all though so I got into the habit of making very detailed notes.
D: So did you find your tutor helpful in getting you started?
J: Yeah we certainly had some interesting discussions but it’s funny... I saw a brilliant programme about climate change and it was that that really fired me up. It was talking about some recent research which seemed to contradict some of the articles I’d been reading.
D: So you say your tutorials start next week?
J: Yeah.