give this man a god damn cupcake.pete wrote:Man, should you have spare the time you took to write this topic may be you would already be half trough with your essay.
Just take a pile of sheets and a pen in your hand, write anything that pops up in your head even if it has nothing at all to do with your essay and somewhere sometimes the light will come on and
all of a sudden you will write it straight in a matter of time.
Good luck
Writing academic essays?
Re: beaches!
My roommate in college used to write papers for a lazy friend of ours. He did it because he got money for it, but he always ridiculed the guy for being too whiny to write it himself (the lazy guy was going into med school). At the end of one of the papers, he wrote "Shit Shit" after the last sentence, just to see if lazyboy would even take the time to proofread it.Grandpa Stu wrote:have you ever tried slipping in things of complete randomness in your paper to see if your instructor really reads it through or not? in highschool someone i knew would randomly drop "chicken nugget" in his papers and he never got caught for it. it was amusing to say the least.
Of course, he didn't. He discovered it when the paper was handed back and the prof had circled the words and put a question mark by them.
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Guest
Re: Writing academic essays?
For me I have to decide what the fundamental message I want to express is. And why its important not just to others but for myself on an emotional level - which gets to the question of Do I give a shit about the paper?
Once I figure out the message and convince myself its important then the rest is easy.
My advice to you would be if the message of the paper is not something which is important to you, find another message.
Once I figure out the message and convince myself its important then the rest is easy.
My advice to you would be if the message of the paper is not something which is important to you, find another message.
Ezekiel wrote:I’m one of those people that don’t like doing academic essays. I believe that if you enjoy doing them then there must be something wrong with you. This isn’t because I can’t do them – when I manage to sit down and do them I never have a problem, I just find them so unpleasant that I do what many other people do without ever admitting it:
I devise elaborate ways of not doing them in a doing them fashion.
I’ve been doing this for years, and I’ll admit that it is possible for me to prepare for an assessment essay for two months and still be no closer to knowing what I’m doing when I finally sit down to write it. Two months of flicking through books in the university library and looking at online journals as a method of avoidance. I always end up waiting until three days before the submission date, then spend two days getting very drunk – in the back of my mind I harbour a small hope that I’ll come in from a club smashed and fall asleep, only to wake up the next day to find a disk on the kitchen table containing a perfect essay.
This never happens, so in a frenzy of last minute panic at 1am on the day of the deadline I spend four hours off my tits on god knows how many cups of coffee lifting quotes from a pile of books while I type out the entire essay on the fly, relying completely on caffeine induced inspiration. I have a sneaky suspicion that I’ll be doing this on Thursday. It hasn’t failed me yet, but I’m pretty sure that one day it will, and the only way out of this trap is getting my head around the idea of not avoiding it no matter how much I hate it.
Plenty of you are either currently at university or have attended in the past: how did you manage to get things done?
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old nik (q3w): hack103
old nik (q3w): hack103
tnf, you might relate to this, but I just now finished reading a Science article. The reason I love Science and Nature is because the size limitations force the writers to cut through the extraneous bs and get to the point of what they want to say. It makes the reading so much easier. It's amazing how something as detached and emotionless as scientific writing can still be tediously off topic and how poorly some of those things are written. Did you ever find that to be case, too?tnf wrote:Just reiterates the fact that much of the world has a very challenging time trying to express a coherent argument or idea via the written word.emoticon wrote:I'm sure your teachers enjoy reading your hastily prepared reports.
:icon27: s
You must all go to some shitty schools or have some horrible professors. A hastly written essay gets a hastly grade... F. I hope you are all pulling this off in first or second year courses and not senior level classes.
There is no way to write a 20 page paper in 6 hours and have it be anything more than your diary.
Concluding that an essay is nothing more than a long message board post is an insult to scholars.
There is no way to write a 20 page paper in 6 hours and have it be anything more than your diary.
Concluding that an essay is nothing more than a long message board post is an insult to scholars.
Research doesn't do much for the actual writing process so much as to give you a background of what you are going to be talking about. I don't even take notes when flipping though research material, I may just jot down one or two page numbers on a scrap piece of paper, but that's about it and only when I find this super-quote that's a must have. Other than that, no notes. But I do read through a lot of material to make sure that I am very familiar with the topic.
Next, come up with a thesis. What you want to argue and the stance of your arguement - for or against, etc. This is the point of your paper. This becomes the introduction of your paper. The intro should be very clear as to what your thesis is. The person reading it should be able to identity 1 sentence in your intro that is your thesis.
Come up with 3 major points that will help you argue your thesis. Depending on the length of the paper, you may need to come up with 3 minor points to support each major point. This will form the body of your paper. Make sure each arguement reiterates your stance from the thesis. Support each arguement with samples of stuff from your research material. As I said, I don't take notes, so I just flip through stuff briefly a second time and pull out interesting bits here and there.
Conclude your paper by restating the thesis in different words, and also sum up your 3 major points, and briefly tie them together.
Include cover page, reference page, print, staple, go have a beer.
Using this method, I've never gotten a grade below 75% on a paper. Average usually around 80-90%... but that might be just me.
Next, come up with a thesis. What you want to argue and the stance of your arguement - for or against, etc. This is the point of your paper. This becomes the introduction of your paper. The intro should be very clear as to what your thesis is. The person reading it should be able to identity 1 sentence in your intro that is your thesis.
Come up with 3 major points that will help you argue your thesis. Depending on the length of the paper, you may need to come up with 3 minor points to support each major point. This will form the body of your paper. Make sure each arguement reiterates your stance from the thesis. Support each arguement with samples of stuff from your research material. As I said, I don't take notes, so I just flip through stuff briefly a second time and pull out interesting bits here and there.
Conclude your paper by restating the thesis in different words, and also sum up your 3 major points, and briefly tie them together.
Include cover page, reference page, print, staple, go have a beer.
Using this method, I've never gotten a grade below 75% on a paper. Average usually around 80-90%... but that might be just me.
Last edited by obsidian on Wed Dec 07, 2005 5:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
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[xeno]Julios
- Posts: 6216
- Joined: Fri Dec 10, 1999 8:00 am
sometimes the words flow. I wrote a philosophy essay for university in one go once - took about 3-4 hours. Ended up winning a prize for it and getting a 100%duffman91 wrote:
There is no way to write a 20 page paper in 6 hours and have it be anything more than your diary.
I've also taken days to write essays which I've spent more effort on, and gotten 70's.
Depends on what you're writing, and what approach you use to formulate it.
I dunno, check out my 1800 word post halfway down this page - perhaps not scholarly, but if i wanted to turn it into publishable material it wouldn't take too much tweaking.Concluding that an essay is nothing more than a long message board post is an insult to scholars.
http://www.quake3world.com/forum/viewto ... 679#268679
Depends on what sort of essay you're writing. If it's a research paper, then yea, the msgboard comparison doesn't usually hold over, although there's no reason in principle why it couldn't.
I just find that many people are scared of writing essays, yet many have no problem writing on a messageboard. It's comforting to realize that they both involve similar skills. People think essay and they panic, many times irrationally.
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[xeno]Julios
- Posts: 6216
- Joined: Fri Dec 10, 1999 8:00 am
never said journal quality.
Journals typically require qualitatively different forms of information presentation, and for different types of information.
However, I don't consider them to have higher standards of quality, just different.
One thing for which they do have exceptional standards is epistemic responsibility. Knowledge claims are qualified to a far greater degree than other forms of literature.
Journals typically require qualitatively different forms of information presentation, and for different types of information.
However, I don't consider them to have higher standards of quality, just different.
One thing for which they do have exceptional standards is epistemic responsibility. Knowledge claims are qualified to a far greater degree than other forms of literature.
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[xeno]Julios
- Posts: 6216
- Joined: Fri Dec 10, 1999 8:00 am
was thinking more of a book, rather than journal.
plus, i was using the thread as an excuse to plug the post
but seriously, my main point was to get across that there are often psychological hangups ppl have with essays. Pointing out that they have less anxiety posting on a messageboard may help to reduce such hangups.
plus, i was using the thread as an excuse to plug the post
but seriously, my main point was to get across that there are often psychological hangups ppl have with essays. Pointing out that they have less anxiety posting on a messageboard may help to reduce such hangups.