So you have to write a research paper. Welcome to the basis for grading in many humanities courses. The nice thing is that usually you will have a decent amount of time to do this. The not-so-nice thing is that grading is (in my experience) enormously subjective. Since every professor will likely have a different scale for grading, the best you can do is prepare a solid paper and trust that your work will speak for itself. Here are some ideas for getting started (plus a quick guide to note-taking and essay writing):
prompts: Were you given a prompt for this research paper? If so, you’re in luck. If not, don’t worry—you’re going to create your own. Let’s assume you’ve been given a prompt, or possibly several prompts to choose from. Read them over, highlighting or underlining key words. Then, choose the one that either you want to answer, or that you feel capable of answering. Sometimes this is a choice between writing a paper that bores you but covers materials you know well (if, for example, you’re overworked and don’t have a lot of time), or writing a paper you’re sincerely interested in but would have to do a lot more prep work for. Also, the prompt should tell you details such as number of sources required, page-length, formatting, citation style, etc., so be sure to mark those. Why start here? Well, you won’t get very far in gathering sources if you don’t have a prompt.
key words: But wait, how do you know which words are key in a prompt? OK, so let’s say you’re writing for an English class; probably there will be themes, characters, certain quotations mentioned in the prompt. Or for a history class, there will probably be a time period, political slant, policy question, etc. Look for imperatives such as, “explain,” “examine,” “address,” “evaluate,” and the like. The prompts, if they are written well, will offer you a lot of info for formulating your thesis. There may also be a direct question in the prompt. If so, make sure you answer it!
make your own: Sometimes you’ll be told, “Write me a paper,” and set loose. I know a lot of my students find this incredibly frustrating so I don’t do it to them; that said, some professors still will. So what you have to do then is, in a way, be your own professor. What have you studied this semester that you want to know more about? What have you read that you found really interesting? Perhaps there is a certain character you really dislike who somehow gets a good ending in the plot of a novel—why might that be? Perhaps there’s a regime change that had a lot of interesting things going on in the background, which your class didn’t have time to focus on—look into it more. Basically, the prompt-less essay should inspire freedom, not panic. You get to write about whatever you want! The difficulty comes in making sure you still have a well-structured paper, so read on.
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