How to Write a Kickass Paper
Let’s set the scene your Intro to Psychology of Child Development Class is slipping into the C range and you need to raise it back up to a B so you can keep your B average. How are you going to do it? You’re going to ace the next paper that’s how! Well that’s the plan at least, but you’ve been sitting in front of a blank word document for the past hour and a half. Maybe you’ve opened a note book to “review the material”, or maybe you’re really ambitious and opened the text book. It doesn’t matter though, no matter what you do all you can think of is, “Why am I even in this class!” You can deny it all you want, but let’s face it you found yourself on this site. If it wasn’t for this article you would have continued …show more content…
Put on pants
Look down. Where are your pants? I know it’s cozy and the sensation air flowing through your genitals is relaxing, but you’re not trying to take a nap. You’re trying to get shit done, and ironically the only way you’re cranking this shit out is by putting on pants. Before you do that smell yourself. Do you stink? Did you just roll out of bed and expect to write a top tier paper? Well you can’t. You have to be in the right state of mind to write a paper. This is work and you have to treat it as such.
Get up from your work station and take a shower and put on pants. You don’t need an hour long steam session, but you should take an enjoyable shower. While you’re scrubbing the previous night away think about the prompt you just read. Think about what you know about the topic, and what you don’t. This will help you come up with topical ideas for research.
3. Outline
Now that you are clean, dressed for working, and have given the paper some light thought it’s time to get down to some real work. This step is the most involved, and difficult part of writing the paper. Grab the prompt and break the topic into three or four smaller topics. Next, take these topics and write down some notes about each. These can be things you know about the topic or questions you have about them. You should have something that looks similar to …show more content…
By putting on pants?
2. I don’t know?
This is a simple example of an outline, but you get the idea. It’s ok to admit you don’t know something, or to have questions in your outline because you’re about to do research. If you have note cards get those out if not just use your notebook. The note cards are preferable because you can write down the website and notes on where you found the info on one side and on the other you can take typical notes.
4. Research and Take Notes
When you start researching be sure you are using acceptable websites. Typically sites like about.com and Wikipedia are not allowed because the sites are updated to regularly to be tracked. The best way to make sure you are getting reliable sources is to search for “.edu” sites. On google and bing (don’t use bing) you can do this by typing “site:.edu” in the search bar.
When you actually take notes keep them short and sweet. There isn’t an exact number of note cards you will need just be sure to have enough notes to turn each sub category into a paragraph. If you find out you need more information on a topic you can always return to the source. It’s not going anywhere.
5.
Let’s set the scene your Intro to Psychology of Child Development Class is slipping into the C range and you need to raise it back up to a B so you can keep your B average. How are you going to do it? You’re going to ace the next paper that’s how! Well that’s the plan at least, but you’ve been sitting in front of a blank word document for the past hour and a half. Maybe you’ve opened a note book to “review the material”, or maybe you’re really ambitious and opened the text book. It doesn’t matter though, no matter what you do all you can think of is, “Why am I even in this class!” You can deny it all you want, but let’s face it you found yourself on this site. If it wasn’t for this article you would have continued …show more content…
Put on pants
Look down. Where are your pants? I know it’s cozy and the sensation air flowing through your genitals is relaxing, but you’re not trying to take a nap. You’re trying to get shit done, and ironically the only way you’re cranking this shit out is by putting on pants. Before you do that smell yourself. Do you stink? Did you just roll out of bed and expect to write a top tier paper? Well you can’t. You have to be in the right state of mind to write a paper. This is work and you have to treat it as such.
Get up from your work station and take a shower and put on pants. You don’t need an hour long steam session, but you should take an enjoyable shower. While you’re scrubbing the previous night away think about the prompt you just read. Think about what you know about the topic, and what you don’t. This will help you come up with topical ideas for research.
3. Outline
Now that you are clean, dressed for working, and have given the paper some light thought it’s time to get down to some real work. This step is the most involved, and difficult part of writing the paper. Grab the prompt and break the topic into three or four smaller topics. Next, take these topics and write down some notes about each. These can be things you know about the topic or questions you have about them. You should have something that looks similar to …show more content…
By putting on pants?
2. I don’t know?
This is a simple example of an outline, but you get the idea. It’s ok to admit you don’t know something, or to have questions in your outline because you’re about to do research. If you have note cards get those out if not just use your notebook. The note cards are preferable because you can write down the website and notes on where you found the info on one side and on the other you can take typical notes.
4. Research and Take Notes
When you start researching be sure you are using acceptable websites. Typically sites like about.com and Wikipedia are not allowed because the sites are updated to regularly to be tracked. The best way to make sure you are getting reliable sources is to search for “.edu” sites. On google and bing (don’t use bing) you can do this by typing “site:.edu” in the search bar.
When you actually take notes keep them short and sweet. There isn’t an exact number of note cards you will need just be sure to have enough notes to turn each sub category into a paragraph. If you find out you need more information on a topic you can always return to the source. It’s not going anywhere.
5.