Whether it’s a literary analysis essay or a lab report, there’s no doubt that getting your first written assignment at university can be daunting. So, it’s no wonder that students often get stuck in spirals of self-doubt… Is my writing any good? Does my argument make sense? How do I incorporate existing scholarship into my own work? Are my in-text citations correctly formatted? Should it take me this long to make a bibliography? And so on until 4am on the morning of the deadline…
But effective university-level writing does not require you to sacrifice either sleep or socializing. What it does require is practice, planning, and patience.
Practice
Whenever you write a research paper, you are cultivating your communication skills. However, you should not overlook the important role that reading plays in refining your writing abilities. When we read widely, we are exposed to new vocabulary as well as myriad ways of articulating ideas depending on the format, purpose, and intended audience of each text. This not only helps us to understand key terminology from different fields of study, but also to convey our points as clearly and concisely as possible.
When you receive your Winter Term booklists, remember that they are not exhaustive, so you will be intellectually rewarded for reading around the subject outside of class. Reading scholars’ work in peer-reviewed sources will give you insight into the writing styles that you should be aiming for in your chosen field; pay attention to how scholars present information and try to infuse your own papers with some of the new terminologies that you learn from them.
Does this mean that you need to start reading War and Peace-length texts each week? Of course not! But it does mean that you will improve your writing by setting aside time in your weekly timetable to read an interesting scholarly article related to one of your courses.
Planning
You may have gotten away with writing a last-minute essay at some point in your high-school career. But bear in mind that reaching your full potential with a university paper takes careful planning.
As soon as you have the instructions for your assignment, start to plan your schedule towards the deadline. Remember that you need to give yourself adequate time to reflect, research, write, and edit your paper, so spread these tasks out in a reasonable way. For instance, if you have four weeks till the deadline, and you know that it takes you a long time to write papers, focus on reflecting and reading for the first week and writing and editing for the final three weeks. If you find that reading takes more time, but you write fairly quickly, you might designate two weeks for reflection and reading and two for writing and editing instead. However you end up dividing your time, just make sure that you don’t leave everything until the night before!
Patience
In our fast-paced world, it is easy to forget that writing is a craft, and, just like any other craft, it takes time to refine. Every accomplished author and university professor makes a draft, chucks a notepad-worth of work away, starts again (and again), and trawls through microscopic edits before they publish any writing. Far from being a flaw, taking time over your written assignments demonstrates a thoughtful engagement with the subject and an understanding that language matters. So do not panic if your research papers don’t read like those of your professors just yet. Instead, remember that they were once students fretting over their own assignments too. Their academic journeys took time, and so will yours!
