If you’re in college, and you’re dreading the task of writing a college paper, don’t feel like you’re alone. Call it procrastination. Call it unending research. Call it the inability to come up with a good topic. But basically, it’s a college assignment and task that for most students is pushed aside until the night before the paper is due…unless you’re part of the 1 percent who make a schedule and stick to it.
If you’re in the 99 percent group of students who procrastinate about writing a college paper until the night before it’s due, read on to discover several secrets to getting that paper written fast and making it read like a pro wrote it.
“Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you’re doing…none of that is writing. Writing is writing.”
photo credit: pidjak777 morguefile
~E.L. Doctorow
HINT #1: If your instructor gave you a website with a list of possible essay topics, DO NOT CHOOSE A TOPIC FROM THAT LIST! Almost 95 percent of college students choose from that list, which secretly tells your instructor you didn’t know what to write. Also, the topic might be boring to you, and writing about it will end up with you receiving a bad grade.
Instead, do a quick search in Google News or any online news reporting site that lists the latest trending topics and stories. Find an item that interests you and start writing.
HINT #2: You can state the facts behind your idea and you can even quote websites or people in the industry, but most important is to add your own logical thought process that you want to convey to the reader of your paper. Professors love this approach, because it shows that you did your research, chose a tending topic, and now you’re enlarging the scope of the paper by making it logical with your opinions and viewpoints.
HINT #3: An often-overlooked resource for quick information is a glossary related to your specific field of interest. For example, the topic about vaccines and their effects on children has been in the news a lot while this blog post was being written. Now, if you go to your favorite search engine and type this phrase into the search box: glossary for vaccines and its effects on children, two of the top results will point you to government websites where you are free to use any of their information.
Glossary of Vaccines and Immunizations Terms | Vaccines.govhttps://www.vaccines.gov/more_info/glossary/A vaccine in which live virus is weakened through chemical or physical processes in order to produce an immune response without causing the severe effects of …
Vaccine Glossary of Terms | CDC
www.cdc.gov/vaccines/terms/glossary.html
Aug 17, 2015 – Glossary of terms used on Vaccines and Immunizations website. … to produce an immune response without causing the severe effects of the disease. … disease (through vaccinationand/or prior illness) to make its spread from person to person unlikely. ….. A group of viruses that cause diarrhea in children.
By looking through a glossary, you can get a quick look at words and associated thoughts that will give you lots of information for writing your college paper. Or, if you just need to expand an existing paper, you can include a glossary, which will add to your page count and resource effectiveness.
HINT #4: As true as it is for any speech, nonfiction book or an everyday powerful press release, make sure your college paper includes a “Summary” or a “Conclusion.” The conclusion compiles all the information you provided into a simple-to-read sentence or short paragraph. Think of it as a longer hashtag version of what you’d post on Twitter or Facebook. #collegepaper #elephantintheroom
Finally, not only is it important that you include a conclusion to your paper, but now you know a quick way to do research. Just go online and read summaries or conclusions from other topics and incorporate those thoughts into your own work.
Have you ever written a college paper the night before it was due? Leave us your comments below.
