COLUMN: Lessons learned from writing term papers
As a veteran of this whole college thing (Dubya was still president when I started at CMU), I’ve written far more term papers than any human should.
It never gets any better or more manageable, as many grizzled and jaded juniors, seniors and graduate students can affirm. You even get oddly nostalgic for those horrible, 10-page research papers from freshman year, when you have multiple 20-page behemoths standing between you and your master’s degree.
But enough of my sob story. I’ll save it for my post-graduation life on the streets while I’m holding a cardboard sign that says “Will Write Poorly Received Opinion Pieces for Food.”
Instead, I want to share some of the lessons I have learned while slapping together term papers, in hopes that you can learn from my mistakes.
First off, I’d encourage you not put off a term paper until the night before it’s due. Even if you mash keys like a madman and reach the minimum page requirement, no amount of stimulants (legal or illegal) in the world will save you from producing an incoherent piece of crap.
I once drank four cups of coffee in 15 minutes and powered through a 15-page paper in six hours. The next morning, after catching an oh-so-refreshing two hours of sleep, I proofread my paper, and it read somewhat like a stream-of-consciousness rant, written by a person high on PCP. I didn’t have time to make major edits, though, and I was way too tired to care, so I turned in that masterpiece and (shockingly enough) received a lower grade than I wanted.
I wouldn’t recommend planning out a large paper in an overly meticulous manner, either. On a few occasions, I’ve used Google Calendar to create a day-by-day itinerary for a paper’s progress; however, I’ve never ended up following my itinerary, so its creation just ends up killing time. In addition, it’s kind of sad when a calendar says I’m supposed to have half a paper finished, and I’ve only created the title page.
Also, it’s very important to avoid Facebook when you should be writing a paper. Obviously, it serves as a distraction, but it’s also pretty annoying and disheartening to see all of your productive and motivated friends bragging about being finished for the semester while you still know that hell awaits you. I’ve often feared starting Facebook battles with my over-achieving friends.
The most important thing to remember while writing term papers is that “this too shall pass," to quote a cliché proverb. Whether you fail or succeed, there will come a time in your life when your research paper on the mating rituals of snapping turtles will be an inconsequential memory, unless you become a breeder of snapping turtles.
