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I definitely learned a lot this semester about studying, essay writing and how to read a book and retain the most out of it. Over the next few days I will be blogging about my experience at McGill University, now in the last year completing my major in English literature.
Term Papers
This semester I had eight term papers to write (I am actually in the process of writing my last one right now). I started by taking what my professors advise me: “Get started early” and “Budget your time.” In spite of this sound advice, I found that I was always cramming at the last minute and spending 15-20 hours writing my essays. I know I’m capable of writing and processing information faster. So what could it be that was stopping me?
Writing outlines works really well for me. Some people just sit down and start writing their essay from start to finish whithout outlining anything at all. No plan, no nothing.
I need an outline. I tried writing a paper on “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Poe and found that I couldn’t get my thoughts properly sorted out until I had an outline in front of me to guage where I was at. The first step of being able to write an essay effectively is accepting yourself for who you are and working with the methods that function best for you.
Parkinson’s Law
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The law states that if you save a given set of tasks for the last 3 critical hours before you must hand in your project, you will still get it done, and often it will be better than if you stretched it out over 6 hours. After writing a 15 hour paper, I realized that I really needed to do something about this.
The trick I tried was outlining my essay the night before. And then getting up the following morning (the day it was due) at 5:00am and blitzing through the whole writing process. This worked really well for me.
I’m really looking forward to taking a break during the holidays though, all this writing has been quite overwhealming.
