#studyblrmasterposts

essay preparation: a guide by apricitystudies

(section one) the planning stage: getting ready to write

1. understand the requirements: all the things you need to know before you start doing anything else. what’s the word count? how many and what types of sources do you need to use? what’s the required referencing style? what criteria will you be graded on?

2. dissect the question by examining three types of terms. key words, or terms that dictate the topic and focus of your essay. instructional words like ‘how’, ‘why’, ‘discuss’, ‘compare and contrast’, and ‘explain’, which tell you how you should answer the question. scope words, which determine the scope of your essay through location, time period, or people.

(next are two examples which i annotated by hand, so i’ll try my best to express them in text form! sorry if the meaning is unclear.)

example 1: breaking down an easy question. what effect does economic hardship have on the rise of totalitarianism? discuss this relationship using examples from the 20th and 21st centuries. here, ‘what’ is an instructional word and ‘effect’ is a key term -- the question is asking you to identify the types of effects. ‘economic hardship’ and ‘the rise of totalitarianism’ are key terms, and this is the relationship the question is focusing on. ‘discuss’ and ‘using examples’ are instructional words telling you how to got about identifying the effects in this relationship. the ‘20th and 21st centuries’ are scope words.

example 2: breaking down a vague question. was the cold war a real or imagined conflict? ‘was’ is an instructional word telling you that this is a yes-or-no question. ‘cold war’ is a key term and  the focus of the question. (end of examples)

3. creating an essay plan, which comprises three parts. a working thesis, or how you will answer the question, the main points of your essay, or how you will prove your thesis is true, and the order of those points, or how you will organise your answer.

an example essay plan based on the earlier question: was the cold war a real or imagined conflict? working thesis: the cold war was a real conflict because it had real, unquestionable, and lasting impacts. main points in order: the impact off the arms race on modern nuclear arsenals, the impact of the korean and vietnam wars, and the impact of the ideological division of europe. this is a highly oversimplified plan! (end of example and planning section)

(section 2) the research stage: gathering information

1. determine what you need to know using these three questions to help narrow the scope of your research. what types of sources do you need? (e.g. journal articles, primary sources, books, etc.) what information are you looking for? what evidence do you need to back up your main points?

2. make a research log: a single document that contains all the information you need to write your essay. below is a screenshot of a table. the top row is a colour-coding system to split evidence by body paragraph. below, the left column is for in-text citations or footnotes for each source. the next column is for the page numbers of each quote. the final and largest column is for the quotes or evidence themselves.

final note: make sure to create your bibliography as you go!

Hello everyone! As you all know, I'm obsessed with Notion, and I'm also obsessed with talking about it. Personally, I can never get enough of looking for inspiration and new and improved ways to organize my life, so I thought I'd do the same and go through a quick summary of what I keep track of in Notion.

The home section is where I keep everything. If I have a LOT of tasks that can all be grouped under something else, for example, summer internship, I'd put it in a separate page. But for now, home is where I keep just about everything, which I'll go into.

Under home, I have a to do, calendar, my 2020 plan, my monthly goals, everything I need to run this blog, my large-scale writing projects, notes, art I love, takeaways, and an archive.

To do: This is where I presently keep track of everything I have to do, as well as all the things I want to do sometime in the future that are concrete tasks, like taking online courses I'm interested in. I've  broken down this page in great detail on a separate post, which I'll link in the description.

Calendar: This is where I keep track of major deadlines, events, and important things to remember! It's pretty self explanatory. Whatever you like to include on a calendar can go on it! I don't schedule my time here, though. I like to do that in my To do page.

2020: This is a HUGE page where I break down my yearly goals & systems to achieve them, along with a habit tracker, and a log of specific skills and habits I want to keep up semi-regularly. I also have my year in review in this section, which I just gradually add to whenever I feel there's something notable to add.

Monthly: This is where I take some of the goals in my 2020 page and really flesh them out, make them specific and trackable, and pick some focus concepts to keep in mind for the month. Focus concepts are abstract goals like, 'be kinder to yourself!' which are a little hard to solidify but that I feel are still valuable to have written out as a reminder. I try to break them down in the drop down for each goal or system.

Noodledesk: Self-explanatory! Everything I use to keep myself on top of things for this account, my Instagram, and my YouTube.

Projects: This is where I store everything for my large scale writing projects! I do prefer to write in Microsoft Word, though, so I just transfer everything to Notion afterward to keep it all in one place.

Notes: This is where I keep things like articles to read later, my stretching routine, things to keep in mind, and things I access rather regularly. For quick notes that I plan on deleting later, I still prefer to use Google Keep.

Art I Love: Sometimes I'll come across an artist or several pieces of art that I adore and want to keep coming back to, in which case I'll bookmark them on this page.

Takeaways: This is where I keep summary notes of videos, books, and lectures with important lessons that I want to remember and review. These will typically be nonfiction.

Archive: This is a trash bin of sorts, where I just put everything I no longer use but may want to access in the future. This could be old monthly goal pages, random notes I no longer use, one-off lecture notes, and anything else!