#essay guide

I have 6 essays and a dissertation due, which are not staggered for various reasons (deferred a year and had to take a huge break from working on uni stuff for personal reasons), and it makes me extremely stressed and overwhelmed because I don’t have long left to finish them and I’ve still got a lot to go and can’t waste time. 

I’ve recently got into a rut with one I’m working on and realised none of my essays are finished yet. So I’m just sharing what my coping strategies are if you find yourself in a similar position.

1. Create a chart/graph that represents your progress

First of all I make this grid in google docs, and I fill in how far I am with all of my assignments, placing each of them at their individual point of progress. I consider ‘complete’ to be in perfect condition to hand in. As you can see (and it’s the end of Jan, each essay is 3000-4000 words and are all due in May including an 8000 word dissertation) I've been STRUGGLING.

Creating this helps me to visualise where my progress is at, and how much I’ve got to go. This reduces my stress because my brain gets overwhelmed and emotional and I realise I feel more behind than I actually am. This gives me a way to positively frame how I think and feel about my essays and how I will achieve handing them in. It gives me a sense of perspective and control, and I can assess what steps I need to take to be finish, e.g. going back and polishing up those couple of essays.

2. Re-visiting the Assessment Criteria

I have found it so hard to find a method to writing my essays. I have a pretty good one atm which I need to stick to better, because I’ve found myself feeling stuck and not knowing what to say. So writing out each essays Assessment Criteria helps refocus my brain, and reminds me what I will be given marks for and therefore what I should be writing. 

3. Switching Essays

I am in a deep rut with my current essay and realised I was wasting time sitting in front of my laptop not doing anything because I didn’t know what to do next. I was waking up dreading writing this one so realised I was in a position in which switching to another essay would be more efficient since they are due around the same time period. It is a little bit stress inducing leaving an essay on hold, if you like things going smoothly and categorising and checking things off like me you will know. That’s why the chart really helps make it feel manageable ! I am now more motivated to start a new essay and my brain is really grateful for a change in topic. Sometimes we need some time and distance away from the essays we are writing.

4. The Essay Writing Steps (How To Write A University Level Essay)

When starting a new essay I write out all the steps I need on how to do to research and formulate my argument and tick it all off as I go. This is the outline of all the steps, in the order I do it, to researching, brainstorming and writing each essay.

+ Read and write out Assessment Objectives and Learning Outcomes for the module.

+ Read and re-write lecture notes on the course introduction and texts.

+ Make a reading list of secondary criticism.

+ Read criticism and take relevant quotes, making notes and points I want to include in the essay underneath in a different colour to differentiate the quotes from my own thoughts.

+ Read and annotate my primary texts (e.g. the novels) using the knowledge I have from my lecture notes and secondary reading and with the Assessment Objectives in mind.

+ When finished reading, flick through the texts and copy out relevant quotes and points in the novels that can be used to support arguments in the essay.

+ Brainstorm the thesis for the essay. Try to summarise in a couple sentences what the overall argument for it will be.

+ With the Assessment Criteria in mind, write out a detailed essay plan. Consider what order to present the arguments in. Include which quotes from both primary and secondary texts to use to support the arguments. 

+ Approach the essay by attempting to write 500 words at a time in intervals between breaks throughout the day. 

Basically that’s it for now. I’ll see how I get on this with this essay by following the steps above that I’ve developed for essay writing and then keeping the assessment criteria in mind and using my lecture notes to supplement my arguments. Hopefully I finish this one all the way through.  If I start to stagnate again, I’ll go back to my google docs chart have a look at an essay I need to polish and work on that, referring to my steps and writing out my Assessment Criteria. I will check each one off as I read my essay and add in any criteria that I missed.

aus - from, out of 

außer - except for

bei - at, at the house of 

mit - with 

nach - to (a place), after, past (time) 

seit - since, for (time)

von - from 

zu - to 

Here are some helpful tips that got me through my later undergrad years of level 300 and 400 classes:

**Read your essay instructions to a friend not in your class. When they ask questions on it use the way you phrase your answer as a start to your essay and how your going to answer the prompt. Typically you know more than you think you do and need someone asking you to dig all that juicy info up to the forefront of your brain. They might even discuss it with you... this is great! Really gets the juices flowing.

**If your a creative writer and you are working on another story and you really don't want to work on your school essay because you have this super exciting exposition to add to your story... add it to your story! Don't just stew and procrastinate by staring sadly at your laptop/paper. Write that story out then move on to the essay. You'll be able to focus better on the essay when it's the essay's turn.

**make sure to leave time the day after writing your essay to go back and look over your essay. You'll notice things you didn't see after a late night session of tapping away at the keyboard. If you can waste the paper print it out too. Check the margins and make sure they don't look funky. Read it aloud. Words that don't flow will jump off the page at you when spoken versus in your head.

**give it to somebody you don't know or you trust to be critical of you... but don't get butthurt! You want the best grade possible so it shouldn't matter how bad your comma placement is so long as someone catches it before the professor does.

**we all know MLA...APA... or whatever format sucks but make sure you do it right. Why get marked down for format? Especially for citations? Find a computer tech savvy person (cough cough school computer lab cough), ask the student worker there and have them help you out. Quite often a teacher is overseeing the student worker there and will help you if the student worker cannot. It's in their job description.

The Writing an Essay Worksheet

For several years, I’ve used a home-grown worksheet in teaching essay writing – as I could not find one online or in any textbook to my own liking.  Today as I taught Position Argument essay, without my worksheet in hand for my Comp II course as I’d neglected to bring it to class, I pulled it all from memory … and oh boy … adjustments needed! For instance – in class I preach that the audience is…

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