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As the middle of October arrives and November looms, peak essay-writing season begins. Midterms have come and gone. Quizzes are petering out as professors make way for the big guns: projects, exams and compositions. While the air is chilly and the apple cider is hot, the library is the place to be this season as we look out the windows and try not to freak out.
Most APA style guides and online study blogs talk about pacing, outlines and daily schedules for getting the paper done on time. What many of them fail to see is that most students have this interesting thing called a “life” going on in the background.
Sometimes using that month to plan every day for research isn’t feasible, and the paper is due that week. So how does someone write something that makes sense, gets the grade and doesn’t put the writer to sleep just thinking about it? There are unconventional ways of getting around the research writing blues.
1. Pick a topic that doesn’t make you want to take a nap. If it’s early enough in the writing process, picking the right topic for you is crucial. Granted, in classes that are outside of your general interests, this can feel nearly impossible.
Most English students might not find the history of geology to be their “thing,” which is fair. Remember: this is college. As John Mulaney puts it, “college is just your opinion.”
If you can formulate a well-informed hypothesis, find articles supporting or refuting that idea on JSTOR and enjoy the process of writing about it, then write about something you think is cool. Who knows? Maybe there are sources out there about how sedimentary rock inspired Edgar Allen Poe to write “The Raven.”
2. Write your sources before writing the paper. Who remembers the good old days of high school when they made you write an annotated bibliography? It was definitely a pain, but at their core, annotated bibliographies are only trying to help.
Not only do they require the researcher to read and understand the material, but they also help make the citations easy to copy-paste into the reference section, and eventually the paper.
While you don’t have to write an entire paragraph of annotations, a few bullet points on the results or a quote that makes your point can be easily written into your paper later and save a few minutes coming up with what to say.
3. Write in an order that makes sense to you. There’s this expectation that a paper should be written from the first sentence to the last sentence in a few writing sessions.
However, with research, the paper rarely begins at the beginning. Sometimes you find a cool article or prompt which leads to a question, or sometimes you start with the question and start web searching for books and TedTalks with the same key words. Write the points you want to make and the things you want to summarize in complete sentences but in whatever order makes sense.
At the end, it’s easier to have all of the puzzle pieces and move them around in the document. Make the content fit an organizational pattern once it’s already written.
4. Bounce ideas off of other people. Once you’ve moved things around in the document, stitched them together with transitional sentences and closed the EasyBib tab, run your paper by a few people.
Before going to a writing tutor, take it to someone who knows nothing about the subject matter. If your “Historical Uses for a Bunsen Burner” essay makes sense to someone who does not know what a Bunsen burner is, and it manages to teach them something, that’s a good start.
Next, take it to someone in the class or related major who has some knowledge. They can help iron out the problems and correct simple mistakes that cost points during grading. This is also a good practice in taking criticism, because the universe knows we all need it sometimes.
Finally, take it to a writing tutor. The writing tutor will help get rid of the last of the grammar mistakes and show you how to write your ideas in stronger ways.
The traditional suggestions still stand, of course. Understand yourself enough to know if you need a day, a week or a month to start and finish the paper. Ask your professor questions about expectations. If at all possible, don’t pull an all-nighter.
There’s nothing obligating you to write a research paper in the exact same way you were trained to.
Changing the format can help you state your claim, cut the fluff and impress a professor.
