#supervisions

In-text citations and reference lists are absolute musts in supervision essays (although sometimes I in-texted cited extensively but “forgot” to do the reference list). Don’t panic though - you will be taught everything before your first essay! There are often introductory sessions held by faculty librarians to teach you how to reference and what to reference (ie. you probably don’t need to reference sparknotes unless you draw something directly from there), and your supervisors/librarians will be happy to lend you a hand if you’re confused! 

13/100 Days of Productivity // Wednesday 22nd March

Sorry this has taken me so long to get to - I keep starting an answer, and then stopping! I’ll throw this out to @expatesque and give you a couple of tips in the meantime: 

1. Know where to stop with the reading list - like you said, sometimes you just don’t have enough time to do a super thorough job with each essay. Sometimes you need to extract the most relevant articles/books on the reading list, read those in depth and then just skim through the others. One of the things that I like to do is read the introduction and conclusion, either of the book, or of the chapter - it tends to provide you with an overview of the argument and helps you determine whether or not you want to go through and read the whole chapter/parts of the whole chapter in more depth. Also don’t be afraid not to have a super extensive bibliography - I sometimes find that when I read too much, it can be difficult to actually voice my own opinions/ideas because I feel the need to show how much reading I’ve done. When you haven’t read a lot, you have to draw connections and conclusions and fill in the blanks with your own voice, which can be a good thing!

2. Take breaks when you need to - quality over quantity! There is no point in spending hours in the library in front of a computer screen if you’re not doing anything. If you find yourself stagnating, take time off. When you get back to work, you’ll be more efficient than you were before.

CONGRATULATIONS! Honestly, don’t panic about proving yourself -- first year is really a learning experience, particularly in first term. I think stressing about getting a first at this stage can actually be detrimental -- it is, of course, good to have that as a goal in mind, but at the same time, there are going to be a lot of things that you need to improve on, and it’s best to really take things one step at a time. Your supervisors will give you lots of guidance on how to best tackle exam questions, and they’ll help you understand what’s expected of you -- it’s something that may not be clear immediately, but will become increasingly apparent as you continue on throughout the year.

I’m going to link you to two posts that I’ve written on how to get firsts, but I’d suggest reading over them properly after you’ve settled down a little bit -- they’ll make a lot more sense once you’ve learned how to approach a Cam essay and once you’ve written a few essays, so you know what you’re already doing, and what you need to include/improve on. Trying to cram all of the stuff I’ve mentioned into your first essay may actually be detrimental because you’ll be so focused on being original etc. that you might not write like you usually do/it may feel forced. It honestly does not matter if your first essay is really bad: supervisors don’t expect something amazing, and it’s actually better if they’ve got lots of things that they can work with you on because it helps you get a better overall understanding of what’s expected. 

It’s really hard to pin down exactly what could push your essay up to a 1st without having actually read it. I would highly recommend going to your supervisors for the individual papers and having a chat with them about where they think you can improve. They’ve had a lot of time to get familiar with your writing style and believe me, they want the best for you in these exams, so they’ll be happy to help you identify points in your writing that could be weak. Also, different subjects have slightly different ways of writing essays and therefore different focus points – something that may be really important in one subject may be less important in another, and it’s only through talking to your supervisors that you’ll learn what’s key in yours.

All that being said, here are a couple of things that I think are important: 

1. Originality: this is kind of the key defining feature of a first, but it’s really hard to pin down. It doesn’t mean that you have to come up with a brand new argument – instead, it means including something in your essay that’s a bit different. It could be a critical assessment of the material you’re using (is it severely limited in its support for the argument? Why? What are the implications?), an example/theory that you’ve derived from material not on the reading list, a new interpretation of an example (ie. if it’s interpreted using (x) theory from the reading it means this, but if you interpret it using (x) theory not from the reading it could mean this), drawing a link between different parts of the paper/different papers etc. It’s important though not to sacrifice the quality of your essay in your attempt to be original (i.e. don’t just throw something with a very tenuous link to your overall argument in because it wasn’t on the reading list – it has to be well-incorporated); you don’t want to be told that your essay was original and good, but the parts that were original weren’t good and the parts that were good weren’t original (yes, I totally stole that from a professor). 

2. Coherence: structure is absolutely positively 100% key. If you’ve got all the right information, but it’s all over the place with no clear argument, then you can’t get a first. Make sure you’ve got a strong thesis statement (what makes up a strong thesis statement differs across subjects -- some want a ‘this is what i’m going to argue’, some want ‘this is what I’m going to argue and this is what I’m going to do to argue it’, some want a list of factors that you’re going to consider blah blah -- it can be very very variable), and make sure that at the end of each paragraph, you link back to the question. Like great, you’ve said all this cool stuff -- how does it answer the question? What does it mean? Also make sure you’re linking between your paragraphs very clearly, and that the beginning of each paragraph has a strong topic sentence. The examiner may have read several essays by the time s/he gets to yours. S/he’s going to be tired -- don’t make them work hard, give them a very clear indicator of what you’re argument is. Also make sure you finish your essay. Even a one sentence conclusion is better than no conclusion, because at least you’re not leaving them hanging! 

3. Opinion. This sort of ties into originality, but if you just restate the lecture material in a nice organised way, you’re not going to get more than a 2.i. You need to be arguing a point, you need to be bringing your opinion into the mix. The way you do this will depend on the essay -- for some, you’ll be able to intersperse it in the essay in each paragraph, for others you may not be able to bring it in until the end. But you’ve got to make sure that you’re putting in your opinion of the evidence/arguments.

Oh, and of course #4: Answer the question. If you’ve got a question that’s similar to a supervision question, don’t just jump in with your supo essay without reading what you’re being asked to answer. Make sure to argue your point in a way that relates to the question -- by referring back to the question at the end of each paragraph, when you’re doing the whole ‘this evidence is cool but here’s why it matters’, you can do this pretty well.

(a) High pressure (Cam crams more work into a shorter term than other unis do),