# The Dreaded Essays...



## NeonMidget (Aug 7, 2017)

Anyone else not enjoy essays ? :ball:

University is mostly comprised of essays I've found, it's very sapping work writing something that it almost entirely comprised of other people's ideas and research I also find it insanely boring. 

Anyone have tips for getting through or psyching yourself up for a long day of essay writing... :triumphant:


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## joshman108 (Apr 14, 2014)

Do you have money to have someone else do them?


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## jamesh (Aug 10, 2017)

i don't enjoy essay, i enjoy debate XD

HAHAHAHA XD

i stop listening to my music when i want to write, i just can't listen to all of them at the same time writing essay. i gotta be focus and i need those endorphines and adrenaline, so i write after i'm listening to music that makes me happy! something like this, 



 XD


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## Red Panda (Aug 18, 2010)

I kinda enjoyed most of my essays during university because I liked the subject. Those I did not were pretty frustrating for sure. 
It didn't help that I always procrastinated up to the last few days before deadline, sometimes even doing them on the last day. 
Maybe making a small plan before with a list of things you have to do and research for and then write up small summaries of what you want each paragraph/section to be about. Working way earlier than the deadline is always the best thing of course. 

As for psyching yourself up what worked for me is to just start with small goals, for example that you will read 2 articles now and see how it goes and if you feel like doing more. That worked for me because I didn't put too much pressure on myself and usually it was enough to have me invested for far longer as I wanted to learn more and seeing that I progress I often ended up doing a lot more than just 2 articles.


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## angelfish (Feb 17, 2011)

Essays... love/hate. I somewhat enjoyed academic writing and did fairly well at it, but I am a perfectionist and an essay is just a LOT of content to feel concerned about. 

Personally I found life so much easier when I got the hang of creating a skeleton structure for essays and then filling it in, rather than writing a whole long thing in one go. It's also easier to work in small chunks then, because there are so many natural stopping places. And you can skip around in terms of where you want to work on, and reorganize at will. 

IMO it's also useful to make yourself an annotated bibliography _while_ you're doing your research, or just to take down some good quotes and their citations. It seems like a pain in the ass but it makes you fly a lot faster through things if you're in a time crunch.

Other than that... good acoustic music, snacks, a break or two, and something fun to look forward to after you finish...


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## Handsome Dyke (Oct 4, 2012)

NeonMidget said:


> University is mostly comprised of essays I've found,


Depends on your major. I hardly ever wrote essays as a university student.



> it's very sapping work writing something that it almost entirely comprised of other people's ideas and research I also find it insanely boring.


That's strange, what you are describing doesn't seem like the essays we do here. What's called an essay here is made up almost entirely of the student's own opinions and little or no research is required. What you are describing sounds like a literature review or something. What are you studying?


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## General Lee Awesome (Sep 28, 2014)

No I can't stand essays. ;(


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## dulcinea (Aug 22, 2011)

I actually love writing essays, and was a really good writer in school, so, at first, I was just gonna look at my notifications, but decided to come help out lol. Hope that doesn't make me sound like an annoying knowitall smartypants. It's just that I always did well writing essays, even when I was struggling in school.

I think the first step would be to find a way to make the reading material interesting. It's easier said than done, but an important step is to somehow make the information your own, by comparing it to your experience or things that you're familiar with. Also maybe ask questions about what's happening in the text: "Was this event good or bad? Did it have a good or bad impact? What if this situation never happened? or something didn't exist?" This especially helps with history. Sometimes it's good to zoom out a little to see the big picture, instead of just be bogged down with details. 

Then when you go to write the essay, it's so important to have your own opinion that can be written down in one sentence, that can be supported by quotes and data. Then the body is really just that, quotes and data. If you write good notes when looking for data so support your conclusions, you can often just pretty much copy from your notes, and just tweak the wording a little. Then the last paragraph just sums it up.

I find essay writing is an important skill, not that you'll necessarily be writing actual essays in your post school life, but it teaches you how to do research on any given topic, come to informed conclusions, and have a good basis for making sound decisions.


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## NeonMidget (Aug 7, 2017)

joshman108 said:


> Do you have money to have someone else do them?


Sadly no :stomp:


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## NeonMidget (Aug 7, 2017)

Benty Fagatronicus said:


> Depends on your major. I hardly ever wrote essays as a university student.
> 
> 
> That's strange, what you are describing doesn't seem like the essays we do here. What's called an essay here is made up almost entirely of the student's own opinions and little or no research is required. What you are describing sounds like a literature review or something. What are you studying?


I live in New Zealand and we have a straaaange education system, completely different than most countries. Everything that we write has to have evidence to back up what we just said. I'm doing a degree in Health Promotion, so lots of medical articles and info I have to pull from them to back up anything and everything I say. :distant:


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## NeonMidget (Aug 7, 2017)

dulcinea said:


> I actually love writing essays, and was a really good writer in school, so, at first, I was just gonna look at my notifications, but decided to come help out lol. Hope that doesn't make me sound like an annoying knowitall smartypants. It's just that I always did well writing essays, even when I was struggling in school.
> 
> I think the first step would be to find a way to make the reading material interesting. It's easier said than done, but an important step is to somehow make the information your own, by comparing it to your experience or things that you're familiar with. Also maybe ask questions about what's happening in the text: "Was this event good or bad? Did it have a good or bad impact? What if this situation never happened? or something didn't exist?" This especially helps with history. Sometimes it's good to zoom out a little to see the big picture, instead of just be bogged down with details.
> 
> ...


Yeah I love writing and using my opinions/experiences in my writing, but essays I do are *not* under any circumstances are we allowed to voice our personal opinion or personal experience in essays it has to be professional and academic in anyway we arent aven allowed to agree or disagree with the topic we are researching/ writing about.


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## dulcinea (Aug 22, 2011)

NeonMidget said:


> Yeah I love writing and using my opinions/experiences in my writing, but essays I do are *not* under any circumstances are we allowed to voice our personal opinion or personal experience in essays it has to be professional and academic in anyway we arent aven allowed to agree or disagree with the topic we are researching/ writing about.


Wow I thought college was supposed to teach young people to think, not blindly obey authority. That's what public school is for


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## Handsome Dyke (Oct 4, 2012)

NeonMidget said:


> I live in New Zealand and we have a straaaange education system, completely different than most countries. Everything that we write has to have evidence to back up what we just said. I'm doing a degree in Health Promotion, so lots of medical articles and info I have to pull from them to back up anything and everything I say. :distant:


Do you do any opinion-based writing in that school system? Like giving your opinion of a novel or arguing for/against abortion, drug policy, or another political issue?


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## NeonMidget (Aug 7, 2017)

Benty Fagatronicus said:


> Do you do any opinion-based writing in that school system? Like giving your opinion of a novel or arguing for/against abortion, drug policy, or another political issue?


If we want to voice our opinion on something in an essay our "opinion" even though we can't have one, we have to argue a side of a matter, so we think abortion is "bad' for example, we would have to find articles/info that would back up the statement, so its hard to voice an opinion on something that isn't included in academic literature...


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## tanstaafl28 (Sep 10, 2012)

NeonMidget said:


> Anyone else not enjoy essays ? :ball:
> 
> University is mostly comprised of essays I've found, it's very sapping work writing something that it almost entirely comprised of other people's ideas and research I also find it insanely boring.
> 
> Anyone have tips for getting through or psyching yourself up for a long day of essay writing... :triumphant:


I rather loved writing essays. I kept a lot of them in a binder. I still have it. Crafting a fine argument and then finding research that supports it is quite exhilarating. I estimate I wrote about 200 essays of varying length in undergrad. Probably another 30 in grad school. Average length was between 5 and 10 pages. My longest was 88 pages (with bibliography). 

I'd say pace yourself. I often wrote a draft the first day and set it aside. Then I'd come back at it the next day, polish it up, add in some good support, and write the conclusion. Give it another day if you can and go over it one more time and see if maybe you need to tweak it here or there. Done.


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## ElusiveFeather (Dec 29, 2016)

Depended on the type of essay. At school, I hated opinion pieces, personal essays & speeches but I absolutely loved short stories & descriptive essays.

Going to art Uni so I won't have many essays to worry about. roud:


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## Grandmaster Yoda (Jan 18, 2014)

NeonMidget said:


> Yeah I love writing and using my opinions/experiences in my writing, but essays I do are *not* under any circumstances are we allowed to voice our personal opinion or personal experience in essays it has to be professional and academic in anyway we arent aven allowed to agree or disagree with the topic we are researching/ writing about.


I wrote 18 essays in my first semester of college. 5 of which were from one of my actual major classes and it was mainly for practical reasons. It's like researching stuff that will directly benefit me in the working world. I researched for example how would doing presentations using PowerPoint relate to your field of choice, etc. That was useful.

Then there was that first English class that kind of taught people the mechanics of how to write clearly and effectively. Well our final exam/essay was to do an argument paper. I think they gave us there articles. One was in favor of this thing. But the directions said cite two sources to support your argument. So two of the sources aligned with each other and the others barely would work together. So you were kind of shoehorned into only writing one paper if you wanted the points. It was fine with me, that was like the trick to it. Finding out which articles would work.

One of my other essays was about obesity and the government. So I went ahead and did the less likely thing and wrote in favor of less government regulation. At the end of class my teacher basically said, "This is basically citing someone else's opinion on the matter." Yes, do you think there were statistics and solid numbers supporting this? It's a philosophical tenet on some level to say less government, not a matter of statistics.

On one hand this is limiting. But on the other hand thinking about what it means to "think for yourself." Really think about the implications of that. Does that mean that you just get to scribble whatever comes to mind? Many of the argument papers that I have wrote were about things that I did not know about or care much about. That means I learned as I wrote. I didn't just pick a side before beginning based on frail side thoughts. But in another way it does limit you because maybe you have a more unique or nunanced perspective than other people. These argument papers are completely useless in that sense. What if you wanted to argue "Maybe some government here, here and here, but not there." Well, guess what? The paper is "yes" or "no." Which is kind of stupid.


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## NeonMidget (Aug 7, 2017)

Grandmaster Yoda said:


> Well, guess what? The paper is "yes" or "no." Which is kind of stupid.


Yup it is haha, oh well they are only essays, I forget all about them after I submit them...


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## Grandmaster Yoda (Jan 18, 2014)

NeonMidget said:


> Yup it is haha, oh well they are only essays, I forget all about them after I submit them...


The fun part of that semester was complaining to my friends who had similarly high workloads and procrastinated as much as I did. Well, all except for the fact that I got much higher grades than them in everything. I just don't fit in with the overachievers.


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## clem (Jun 10, 2017)

Try voice dictation. It decreases the total amount of time that you need to write anything. Then instead of taking the whole entire day, it can be done in just a few hours. The efficiency increase in text entry will make your overall production easier. 

When you do citations, it helps to make a separate file as endnotes, and then convert it to footnotes. 

It also helps to get plenty of coffee.


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