We’ve all experienced it all some point or another: absolute zero motivation to write that college paper. Yup. On a scale of 1 to 10, we’d be a -5. In fact, if we had to choose between writing the college paper and doing a deep-cleaning section of the house, we’d do the latter.
(It’s actually funny how often this happens.)
In a nutshell, this was me last semester. It didn’t matter that my professor had broken up the proposal, thesis, and research components throughout the semester, I was overwhelmed by just looking at the requirements page. It felt like I could never complete it.
And with as overwhelmed as I was just by looking at the requirements, it’s easy to say that I also had zero motivation to actually begin it.
I know, what kind of a college blogger am I if I can hardly bring myself to write a college essay? Despicable.
Sadly enough, I think this describes almost every college student when it comes to writing college papers…but it doesn’t have to be that way. As I struggled to actually begin my essay, I found a way to not only write it with my zero motivation dilemma, but a way to write it easier and better than ever.
Here’s a step-by step guide on how to do it:
1) Select a Specific Topic that Interests You
Writing a college paper when you have no motivation is tough, but writing it when you have absolute zero interest in the topic? Impossible.
That’s why, when writing a college paper, it’s important to select a topic that have some interest in, no matter how marginal that may be. While it’s not a cure for having no motivation, it does help make the project a bit more bearable. Plus, once you at least know what you’ll be writing about, the assignment isn’t going to seem as impossible.
2) Research, Research, Research!
When it comes to writing a research paper in college, there’s no such thing as doing too much research. But just don’t keep it to online articles: visit the library to get books, , academic magazines, journals, and other sources that may be easily available or accessible online.
When I started the research for my dreaded research paper, I took all my notes on Microsoft Word. For each source, I listed the name of the source as a bullet point, and then in a set of sub-bullet points underneath I would take my notes. When these notes came from printed sources (like books) or any other source that had page numbers, I would list that page number next to the corresponding note, especially when this was part of the future citations page. This made creating my bibliography SOOOOOO much easier, especially since I didn’t have to dig through an entire book to cite a single sentence.
For example, this is what the layout of my notes looked like:
- Online news article name
- Note 1
- Note 2
- In-print book name
- Note 1 (page number)
- Note 2 (page number)
- Note 3 (page number)
- Online journal
- Note 1 (page number)
Writing your notes like this can also be done by hand, but I preferred to do it on Microsoft Word because of the handy-dandy “Search” tool, which would allow me to search for certain terms or definitions in my notes later on, which assisted me in both writing the paper and in the bibliography.
3) Select 3 Main Points
Now that you’ve done all of your research, you’re going to select 3 main points. (Or more, if that’s necessary for the assignment.) That’s it! Just go back through your notes and select 3 points that best align with your topic. The points you should choose are going to vary based on the type of paper you’re writing (research, informative, argumentative, etc.); just make sure they can easily flow from one to another throughout the paper, where they will come together to strengthen your thesis (which we’ll get to in a bit). However, selecting 3 main points isn’t just going to be something that helps out with your paper, but your thesis, as well.
In fact, that leads us to the next step…
4) Create a Thesis that will Lead the Reader from Point A to Point B
Ah, the dreaded thesis. In my mind, this is probably every student’s worst nightmare and the hardest part of any essay.
(Actually, I take that back. Conclusions are an absolute nightmare for me to write, even in blog posts. But maybe that’s just me.)
However, a thesis doesn’t have to be hard, and now that you’ve done all the research and selected your 3 main points, it can actually be quite easy! All you have to do is identify your main point (Done! We did that in step 1.), tie in your 3 main points in a way that leads to your position/argument, and state how those points are going to support it. Your professor will most likely give you a rough guide, layout, or example of how they want you to format your thesis, so writing the thesis statement will actually be a breeze once you figure out your topic and 3 main points.
4) Create an Outline of the Paper
When I looked at my essay’s requirement paper, the idea of writing an 8-10 page paper, and especially the idea of writing 8-10 pages on a foreign nation’s political policy, was something that I dreaded. I had no clue where to begin.
However, after following the first 3 points, I knew I could break down the assignment even more by creating an outline of the paper. This was the first time I had ever done this, and if I had known how much time it would save me, not to mention how easy it was, I would have begun this years ago.
To start my outline, I opened up a blank document divided it up into these bullet points:
- Intro + Thesis:
- Main Point 1:
- Main Point 2:
- Main Point 3:
- Conclusion
This was essentially the “skeleton” of the paper. I then copied my thesis into the “Intro + Thesis” section, and then in each of the main points I would include a short blurb about what the main point was. After that I created a second set of bullet points under each of the main points that included the supporting evidence!
This leads me to my next point…
5) Select Your Supporting Evidence
Now that you’ve selected your topic, done your research, written your thesis, and decided on your main points, it’s time to select your supporting evidence.
For me, this was the easiest part of writing my essay, because I had already done all the work! Going back to my notes document, all I had to do was find pieces of research that supported the main points I had chosen, copy those notes, and paste them under the main points that they supported. See? Easy!
Now the outline looked like this:
- Intro + Thesis:
- Main Point #1:
- Supporting Evidence #1:
- Supporting Evidence #2:
- Supporting Evidence #3:
- Main Point #2:
- Supporting Evidence #1:
- Supporting Evidence #2:
- Supporting Evidence #3:
- Main Point #3:
- Supporting Evidence #1:
- Supporting Evidence #2:
- Supporting Evidence #3:
- Conclusion
6) Begin Writing the Body of Your Essay
Ugh, this is the part of the assignment that you’ve been dreading! The part where you actually have to write your essay!
Oops, did I forget to tell you? You’ve already written it!
No, I’m not kidding. When you wrote out the outline, main points, and selected your supporting evidence, you had organized your entire essay. All of the points and pieces of evidence you had decided to talk about were already written down and organized…now all you have to do is piece them together!
Using your handy-dandy outline all written out and organized, it’ll be a piece of cake. Just take them out of the bullet list form and just start putting them together so that the pieces of evidence and the arguments flow together in a coherent way that works towards your stated position/argument. And since you’ve already done over half the work with none of the stress, it will be easier than ever!
7) Write the Intro and Conclusion
I’m a firm believer in not writing the intro or conclusion until the body of the essay has been completed. Why? Well, (1) I hate writing introductions and conclusions (so basically I’m procrastinating), (2) waiting to write them makes it ten times easier since you can just pull from all the content you’ve already written, and (3) you don’t have to worry about backtracking and re-writing them in case your essay has a change in direction.
It doesn’t even matter if you’ve created a super in-depth outline: your essay is going to have content and ideas that you didn’t even plan for when writing your outline. It’s just something that’s going to happen naturally when writing, and by holding off on writing the intro and conclusion, you know have the opportunity to incorporate these ideas, rather than backtracking and figuring out a way to add them in later.
8) Proofread and Edit
You’ve done it! You’ve written your essay. Now comes the “easy” part: proofreading and editing. I’m not going to lie, this is always my favorite part because I know I’ve already conquered the biggest hurdle and it’s all smooth sailing from here.
As long as you haven’t procrastinated until the last minute (like almost all of us college students do), I recommend taking at least a day between writing and editing the essay, just because it gives you an opportunity to clear your head and relax; plus it will give you the opportunity to see additional areas where you can improve. Think of it like you’re baking a cake: you have to let the cake (the essay) cool a bit before putting on the icing (or in this case, proofreading and editing it), otherwise it’s going to mess up and not be as good.
This is also the stage where I like to make my essay extravagant and fancy. I throw in examples, cite quotes and facts, replace “blah” words with elaborate synonyms, and everything else I need to take my essay from “eh” to “AH!”
If you have the time (which you should because you haven’t procrastinated, right? 😉 ), consider taking your essay to your college’s writing center or having a friend/classmate proofread it for you. They are more likely to spot trouble or confusing areas that you (the writer) might not have noticed before. In fact, I consider this an essential, because it can help improve an essay SOOOOOOO much. And since you’re not the one who is actually doing the work of proofreading, why not?
9) Create a Bibliography
It’s time for me to spill the beans: I HATE writing bibliographies. No matter what, my professors always want the citations written a different way than the last one and I always seem to miss something important. Plus, I’m terrified of doing it wrong and getting accused of plagiarism…just for a mistake! In fact, for me writing the citations page may be even more of a struggle than writing the essay.
My tip? Break up writing the citations throughout the day. Maybe stop and write a citation every 30 minutes while working on a reading assignment, or between classes. This will help the process be easier to tackle and not as frustrating. If you’re still afraid of doing the citations page wrong, do it to the best of your ability and then meet with your professor to go over your work, like I did. Because of this I was able to get a corrected citations page done before the assignment was due, which helped me to breathe a little more since I didn’t have to worry about getting points taken off!
Still need a bit of help with the bibliography? No worries. Amanda from The Happy Arkansan has written an AMAZING post on How to Create A Works Cited Page Without The Stress, which you can check out by clicking here.
10) Ensure that All Essay Requirements Were Met
Now it’s time to wrap up the assignment, and ensure that all of the essay’s requirements were met. This is what I like to think of as a “quality check”. Re-read the essay. Is the writing excellent? Or are there some sentences written in passive voice that need to be fixed? Are there any grammatical errors? Formatting errors? ALL of this needs to be checked.
Go back to the requirements page, and draw a check box next to each requirement. Then one-by-one, go through the essay and make sure that each of these requirements are met. This helps to ensure that you didn’t look over any requirement and that your essay is top notch and ready to submit.
Once all of this has been completed, you know what it’s time to do?! Yep, you guessed it: it’s time to submit it!!! You may have had no motivation to write this essay and dragged yourself through the entire process, but you did it. Now it’s time to submit it and relax. (Well, until the next assignment comes along anyway.)
Before you go, let me know which of these tips were the most helpful for you and if you have any tips on how to write an amazing college paper!
Forever,
