Anything but essay writing.....
Rasselas
10-01-2005, 17:35
Right now I should be doing about 3 essays....but....I don't wanna. I'd much rather read every single thread on jolt (and I'm well on my way lol). Anyone wanna join me in not working? Failing that, anyone wanna suggest how I can motivate myself into actually putting pen to paper? (so far I'm 300 words into a 2000 word essay due in friday. Plus I've got another one, and a composition to do for monday:()
John Browning
10-01-2005, 17:37
Right now I should be doing about 3 essays....but....I don't wanna. I'd much rather read every single thread on jolt (and I'm well on my way lol). Anyone wanna join me in not working? Failing that, anyone wanna suggest how I can motivate myself into actually putting pen to paper? (so far I'm 300 words into a 2000 word essay due in friday. Plus I've got another one, and a composition to do for monday:()
Speaking as someone who wrote thousands of words a week during school, it goes faster if you can outline properly. Then you can fool around a lot more in your copious spare time.
Rasselas
10-01-2005, 17:39
Thousands of words a week? Sounds like my worst nightmare. For the last two years of school I did pretty much nothing (I studied maths music and physics - not much writing involved in any of them). Now I'm at uni and they want me to write essays :s Haven't done an essay in years.
Pure Metal
10-01-2005, 17:40
Right now I should be doing about 3 essays....but....I don't wanna. I'd much rather read every single thread on jolt (and I'm well on my way lol). Anyone wanna join me in not working? Failing that, anyone wanna suggest how I can motivate myself into actually putting pen to paper? (so far I'm 300 words into a 2000 word essay due in friday. Plus I've got another one, and a composition to do for monday:()
im supposed to be doing some website shit in Flash atm, but i've been here for hours instead... thinking about doing some work soon... maybe.
as for motivation, turn of your pc, research what it is you are writing the essay about till you can answer it in your head, then turn pc back on and happily type away - you'll be able to get ur head down and just do it then. thats what i did end of last semester when i had 5 to do in a week :( and it worked!
Soviet Narco State
10-01-2005, 17:41
Right now I should be doing about 3 essays....but....I don't wanna. I'd much rather read every single thread on jolt (and I'm well on my way lol). Anyone wanna join me in not working? Failing that, anyone wanna suggest how I can motivate myself into actually putting pen to paper? (so far I'm 300 words into a 2000 word essay due in friday. Plus I've got another one, and a composition to do for monday:()
I suggest you post the topics here. Assuming your teacher never heard of google, you could just wait until some really bored person writes them for you.
John Browning
10-01-2005, 17:42
Thousands of words a week? Sounds like my worst nightmare. For the last two years of school I did pretty much nothing (I studied maths music and physics - not much writing involved in any of them). Now I'm at uni and they want me to write essays :s Haven't done an essay in years.
Try taking five graduate courses in English Literature at the same time.
Then add writing papers for other people too lazy to write their own.
Nsendalen
10-01-2005, 17:46
Got one tip here.
I hate essays, and word targets, so normally I can't really get myself to sit and type.
I found a good way though.
Take the topic, plan it out, and type all your paragraph titles into the document (even if you're going to remove them later). Beneath them, put a smaller target, just for that paragraph based on how much you think there is to say. And if you need to shift these smaller targets around as you write, that's fine.
I found it much easier to do the task in bits, and in long slogs, when I was meeting targets of 300 words and multiple segments, than seeing it as 2500 words and just one chunk of text.
Worked for me, can't guarantee it works for anyone else :)
Sarzonia
10-01-2005, 17:53
Speaking as a former English major and someone with a B.A. in English, I am very much deadset against word limits. The thought that a professor at uni could dock a perfectly good paper just for coming a hairsbreath below some arbitrary figure repulses me.
I prefer the approach that some of my uni professors had: Use a word count as a guideline. As long as you make all the essential points, the word count won't be the first thing to be looked at. If you clock in at 20 pages for what is supposed to be an 8-10 page assignment, that's going to get looked at, or if you write two pages when you're asked to write 20, that's also going to get looked at. If you write a four page paper when the assignment calls for five to six pages and you make all the key points you're supposed to make with good examples, that should not be penalized.
Conceptualists
10-01-2005, 18:12
Right now I should be doing about 3 essays....but....I don't wanna. I'd much rather read every single thread on jolt (and I'm well on my way lol). Anyone wanna join me in not working? Failing that, anyone wanna suggest how I can motivate myself into actually putting pen to paper? (so far I'm 300 words into a 2000 word essay due in friday. Plus I've got another one, and a composition to do for monday:()
Count yourself lucky. I have two essays to do for Thursday (2,500 words each) and two exams to revise for, one on Wednesday and one on Friday.
Conceptualists
10-01-2005, 18:16
Got one tip here.
I hate essays, and word targets, so normally I can't really get myself to sit and type.
I found a good way though.
Take the topic, plan it out, and type all your paragraph titles into the document (even if you're going to remove them later). Beneath them, put a smaller target, just for that paragraph based on how much you think there is to say. And if you need to shift these smaller targets around as you write, that's fine.
I found it much easier to do the task in bits, and in long slogs, when I was meeting targets of 300 words and multiple segments, than seeing it as 2500 words and just one chunk of text.
Worked for me, can't guarantee it works for anyone else :)
That's fairly similar to my way.
I set aside x+2 peices of paper (x being the amount o topics I have, and also introduction and conclusion). Read through my sources, making notes were nessasery (with page number and book etc for citing) So when it comes to writing my essay I don't have to mess around with loads of books trying to find where that piece of information was.
The best essay I've ever written:
I wrote an essay on how to BS your way through an essay...And I BSed my way through it.